$SIMO for NAND exposure is another trade idea that I took positions in today.
SIMO operates effectively as a duopoly (alongside Phison) for merchant controllers and supplies basically:
- Samsung
- SK Hynix
- $MU
- $WDC
- Kioxia
- YMTC, and others.
- Revenue: Q4 2025 reached $278.5 million (+46% yoy and +15% qoq).
- Gross Margins: ~49.2%
- Net Income: ~$47.7 million (up 107% YoY).
- Net Cash: $277.1 million, no debt.
But, management announced 2026 will be the highest revenue year in the company’s history.
They guided Q1 2026 revenue to between $292m-$306m, which is +76%-84% YoY growth rate for the quarter.
They also started shipments to a "Leading AI GPU maker" likely $NVDA for enterprise boot drives, which is TAM expansion.
Memory makers basically outsourcing parts of the SSD controller spaces (eg. mobile/consumer) as they shift to HBM so now quite a bit is sourced exclusively from Silicon Motion.
So you have a profitable, debt-free company with ~50% gross margins profiting off of NAND volume demand, while expanding its TAM into high-margin Nvidia and AI enterprise storage pipelines.
While it doesn't exactly profit from all the NAND hikes (but can do price hikes of its own), it feels like a pretty asymmetrical tailwind/backdoor plays for memory.
At a $4.56B MC and under 20x forward earnings (assuming, $1.2B rev/$6.5 EPS), it's a little later to the game. But upside seems compelling given TAM expansion and the memory supercycle.
The richest companies in the world are going into debt for the AI buildout.
Despite hundreds of billions in net income, companies from $AMZN to $GOOGL have increased capex so much:
That some are projected to be net negative cash in 2026.
Here are the results and who profits:
Amazon ( $AMZN )
2025: +$46.0 billion
2026 (Est): +$11.0 billion
Alphabet ( $GOOGL )
2025: +$80.3 billion
2026 (Est): +$13.0 billion
Meta Platforms ( $META ) - Net Debt
2025: +$22.9 billion
2026 (Est): -$7.0 billion (Expected to swing into Net Debt)
Microsoft ( $MSFT )
2025: +$49.2 billion
2026 (Est): +$59.0 billion
Oracle ( $ORCL )
2025: -$98.0 billion (Net Debt)
2026 (Est): -$115.0 billion
Microsoft appears to be in the safest position. While Amazon and Google have been largely funding the AI buildout with operating income.
However, that large cashflow buffer has vanished. Oracle and Meta appear to be in debt to fuel the buildout, despite $META achieving staggering operating income numbers.
Now, where does the money flow into?
Operating Income Projections:
1. $NVDA - USA
$135.0B -> $186.5B -> $240.1 Billion Operating Income
2. Samsung - Korea
~$30.2B -> ~$170B -> ~$226.7 Billion
3. SK Hynix - Korea
~$32.7B -> ~$124B -> ~$161.0 Billion
4. $TSM - Taiwan
~$62.2B -> ~$86.3B - ~$103.3B – $105.3 Billion
5. $AVGO - America
~$41.5B -> ~$62.8B-$65.1B - ~$84.7B-$93.3B
Of course, these are rough estimates based on analyst projections.
However, from the general trend, this looks like a leveraged bet that the AI buildout will pay off dividends in FCF after they're finished.
But the clear winners appear to be Nvidia, Samsung, SK Hynix, Broadcom, and TSMC.
This comes as hyperscalers, with some going into debt, transfer over their balance sheets to them, expecting a long term ROI from their AI spend.
believe is something, anybody who's not a tourist and has actually witnessed multiple cycles knows this is an amazing long term $sol entry.
for the record the reason im bullposting sol more than anything else is, in my opinion it is the absolute clearest picture of every coin.
nothing else even comes close to the very obvious 5 up and abc down on the weekly apart from possibly $MSTR.
Jan 25th Ratings. Post EU Tariffs and $INTC ER.
Strong Buy:
$SNAP
$META
Samsung Electronics
SK Hynix
$MU
Unimicron
$TSM
$CRCL
$AXTI
$LPTH
$COPX
$LIT
$AEHR
$FORM
$AMKR
$AVGO
$MRVL
Buy:
$COIN
$SMCI
$GOOGL
$FIG
$AMZN
$IBIT
$RDDT
$TTD
$HIMS
$HOOD
$COHR
$AMBA
$IREN
$POET
$AAOI
$LASR
$VPG
$OSS
$INTC
$UMAC
$ONDS
$AIRO
$DPRO
$AVAV
$BULL
$ETOR
VLN
NBIS
GLXY
CIFR
HUT
WULF
Questionable
$VELO
$SKYT
Avoid
$UAVS
$BKKT
WLMT
SLNH
$PLTR
CRWV
$ORCL
$BMNR
$IONQ , RGTI, QBTS
_
Strong Buy
Snapchat - Bottomed around $7.4, imo very strong at this level. Increased FCF from memory opex reduction and memory monetization into 2027. Just a waiting game for re-rating.
Meta - 26% Y/Y revenue growth is extremely strong, produced $10B+ FCF last quarter. Expect it to pick up after next quarter earnings due to optics (700%+ Q/Q EPS optics) that caused selloff last time from BBB.
Samsung Electronics - Holy grail for semis, samsung provides exposure to both hbm and foundry.
SK Hynix - memory supercycle
Micron - memory supercycle, but with US backing.
Unimicron - unholy long for hbm, ic substrates, glass core, cowos, and all other bottlenecks.
TSM - money printer, literally can't go wrong with this.
Circle - 2-3x projected rate cuts would likely hurt circle net income a lot, hence why it's being priced in. But amazing long at $16B as they print money and should start seeing expansion of USDC.
AXTI - LPTH: Bottlenecks for InP / Germanium, etc. Will be a huge theme going into 2026. It's just a waiting game for both supply chain disruption (in AXT) or made in America w/ black diamond in Lightpath.
Low downside risk imo due to capacity ramp -> revenue increase, but moonshot HBM type price increases might be questionable.
COPX - LI: Rare Earths/Materials like Copper, Lithium are great longs for 2026. Similar with bottlenecks above, supply chain disruptions from China will cause money to flow into securing supply + buildout out new supply chains.
AEHR - Honestly, they sit in two different hot verticals in AI and Robotics. $5.5m Sonoma order might be linked with Micron and SiC Testing. Seems like an extremely good moonshot sub $1B MC.
FORM - Likely to be important in US supply chains since they do DRAM/HBM, and Foundry/Logic. & Yield is especailyl important w/ hbm4.
AMKR - extreme beneficiary of made in america us supply chains and tsm -> US
AVGO - Large correction recently post earnings. Strong buy IMO at these levels given hyperscaler ASICs will continue to ramp (even though there's been some delays).
MRVL - Same story with Broadcom, marvell selloff after rumors of Microsoft maia delays. It's just a waiting game for ~2x revenue in 2027 and when markets start pricing that in, and after celestial acqusition, they're doing great stuff in other segments like interconnects.
Buy
Coinbase - Recent correction to Crypto makes Coinbase value decent again at $57B. Was never a fan of their exchange portion, but providing infra for Blackrock IBIT etfs + USDC revenue sharing with Circle, gives Coinbase pretty good long term value.
SMCI - Extreme selloff from the $60's+ back to $30's presents attractive opportunity here. Markets are extremely concerned about gross margins -> SMCI expanding overseas, especially with soverign AI + buying lower end nvda gpus. and SMCI's margins should increase over there. Also likely due to deals to become sticky w/ customers. It's not like they're dying revenue growth to $36B+.
GOOGL - Gemini at this point would likely take over chatgpt, so i'd remain long google.
Figma - Software selloff provides good opportunity into a lot of the hammered names like Figma which extremely high gross margins + sturdy growth
Amazon - Basically same price as last year, they've been growing, AWS is doing fine, they're in robotics + space LEOs, and just seems like a great long going forward
Bitcoin - Always an attractive Long
Reddit - High valuations, but extremely high gross margins and not going anywhere since everyone uses reddit.
TTD - Selloff from 2025 presents attractive valuations again
HIMS - Honestly extremely attractive for me at $29, might be put into strong buy again, but of course revenue deceleration is very worrysome. Main alpha is that markets arent pricing in Zava acqusition and just from sheer customer base, they can derive a lot of revenue from new customers.
Robinhood - Selloff from $140 back to $100 presents a good opportunity for Robinhood again. They're not going anywere, plus new product revenue expansion from banking + others, should present positive tailwinds.
Coherent - Long US supply chains, esp. for photonics, inp, etc.
AMBA - Moonshot long for edge AI inference for robotic ramps + edge compute.
POET - Basically 1/2 cash now, backdoor into marvell + hyperscalers through celestial. Attractive upside at $6.8 given underwriters bought at $7.25
AAOI - long play tethered to msft maia and aws trainium. both of them haven't really taken off yet so it's just a waiting agme
LASR - energy directed weapons are super cool. i dont quite like the fundamentals like low 20% revenue growth, but the technology is just way too cool.
VPG - Long play tethered to optimus ramp. we should see industrial use cases EOY 2026 and consumer EOY 2027, so maybe optimus productions starts hitting balance sheet now or q2.
OSS - Long play on defense sector and edge AI + $200m contract.
INTC - long on us policy, earnings didn't really change any perspective, just short term price.
UMAC - Great long play at these levels on drone manufacturing in US.
ONDS, Airo, DPRO - Same with AIRO, DPRO, bullish on drone sector. There's not much of a massive tailwind compared to a few weeks ago when US was invading venezuela and threatening greenland, but thematically bullish.
AVAV - selloff from misinformation about converting r&D type contracts -> long term contract presents considerable upside
BULL - I do like brokerages like robinhood, webull, etc. that have a ton of retail users since there's endless ways to monetize once you own the customer base. selloff back to $8 presents attractive upsdie
ETOR - selloff way overblown, high net income y/y, basically 50% cash, low downside risk. just waiting for re-rating per earnings. they're doing well too, 70%+ Y/Y AUM, so not sure why they're being priced in like this.
VLN - not quite the same anymore as close to 1:1 assets/nav, at one point they had $11m+ inv (off 63%) gross margins, $93M cash, so would have been closer to 110-120m : $140m MC, which made no sense. That being said still $80m fwd revenue off 63% -> 69% gross margins, seems like considerable opportunity for re-rating. Markets just don't seem to like companies eg. Etoro related to a certain country, I guess
Nebius - $15B clickhouse valuation just goes to show Sum of Parts, where I wouldn't be surpirsed if their subsidaries like Avride ended up overtaking the main business. That being said, near term selling pressure due to $2B+ ATM being sold on open market. Should ramp up extremely fast as they meet their $7B ARR target EOY 2026.
GLXY, CIFR, HUT, IREN, WULF - Remain long on the colo, and other neocloud sector plays. That being said most are up 30-40%+ since 2025, so they're not exactly a strong buy anymore as they've been priced in. But lot of upside remains.
Questionable
VELO - Lot of people asked my opinion on this since FinX loves this stock. They have really cool customers like SpaceX, but fundamentals look terrible.
~$11.8M cash + $17.5M offering vs. ~$23M. debt. They barely have any runway left and people buying now are likely to be diluted.
Velo is the perfect example of amazing customer base like IQE (EU for inP supply chain), but terrible fundamentals.
SKYT - It's a great made in america supply chain company for a lot of cool stuff like quantum components or edge. Benefits from CHIP act, but very slow revenue growth. It's a lot better speculative long than Velo since it has better fundamenatls.
Lower gross margins like 24%, very low operating margins, is obviously priced into MC but U.S. pure-play foundry should be a good story for premium. Bottom line are not really growing too fast though.
Avoid
UAVS - Endless dilution machine with over 100%+ of marketcap given over to arbitrage investors that can convert 100%+ of the shares under 25% market value to sell on retail
BKKT - $300m ATM dilution right now while MC is $550m. Endless dilution machine
Walmart - 43 p/e, there's no way.
SLNH - Lot of dilution ahead.
Palantir - Concern over valuation P/E
Coreweave - Concerns over large debt, $1B+ in debt interest hurts FCF a ton. Then there's allocation/buildout for OpenAI, which has extreme, extreme concerns if they can fulfill contract obligations, especially since gemini is taking over market share of openai.
Oracle - There might be technical rebound, but seriously, they've spent so much capex just for openai (eg. stargate), and like coreweave, OpenAI, which has extreme concerns over if they can fufill contracts obligations
BMNR - endless dilution machine to fund silly projects like $200m into mr. beast's company. Expect long eth staking etfs, short bmnr plays, and premium to go under as $200m cash into mr. beast's company for example is not very liquid.
IONQ, RGTI, QBTS - Quantum valuations are very stretched.
_
Overall Thoughts:
I'm personally staying extremely long, this is just personal thoughts NFI.
A lot of small caps and speculative companies have already been re-rated since Jan 1st and I don't expect many of the 50-100% moves to continue (we've seen a lot of profit taking Friday on some of these names).
That being said, Trump is trying to cut rates even more (another 2-3x projected), esp. since Midterms is coming up.
SPY Up = better chance of getting elected. So I'm staying very long until after Midterms.
That being said a lot of this helps growth, speculative companies etc. But we're already seeing this largely priced in like Rocketlab, one of my favorite longs, reaching $45B+ MC off $155m quarterly revenue, so I'm questioning valuations a bit -> pivoting a lot of positions into more value (eg. software drop or memory supercycle).
Thematically I'm extremely bullish on
- AI, Memory, Semis
- Bottlenecks
- Critical Materials, etc.
Very bullish on
- Made in America supply chains
Bullish on
- Defense Sector
And would look for swing trades/recovery/re-rating for stuff like software to social media companies around now given the recent selloff.
Seems like some of the best performers out of the gate so far this year fall into multiple themes across some combination of national security/tech/defense/energy
EXCLUSIVE EVENT: Q1 2026 MACRO THEMES
Join us Thursday, January 8 at 11:00am ET as Hedgeye CEO @KeithMcCullough hosts our highly anticipated Q1 2026 Macro Themes call.
1Q26 Macro Themes:
1. USA: #Quad1 Goldilocks
2. Rate Cuts: America’s Decelerating Inflation
3. Short USD, Long Gold, Metals, and EM