MoneySprout

Looking for Asymmetries

[Alejo @ecommartinez]

🚨ÚLTIMA HORA : Anthropic acaba de publicar cómo podría verse la economía si la IA realmente despega.

Y su escenario extremo da bastante vértigo.

Para 2030:

→ PIB de EE.UU.: +32,4%
→ crecimiento anual: hasta 15%
→ salarios del trabajo intelectual: -10% o más
→ el capital pasaría de quedarse con el 40% de la economía al 54,8%

La parte inquietante no es que la IA destruya riqueza.

Es exactamente lo contrario.

La economía podría ser muchísimo más rica mientras programadores, analistas y otros trabajadores del conocimiento cobran menos o directamente pierden su empleo.

Nunca habíamos tenido una tecnología capaz de agrandar tanto el pastel y, al mismo tiempo, cambiar de forma tan brutal quién se lo come.

Anthropic no está diciendo que vaya a ocurrir.

Pero que ellos mismos estén modelando este escenario para 2030 ya me parece suficientemente loco.

[Not Jerome Powell @alifarhat79]

I was losing money trading so I bought the iPhone Duo. Now I’m losing money twice as fast

[A.J. Button @AJButton2]

MASSIVE question $GRAB investors need to ask:

Is MEITUAN preparing to enter SEA?!?

A few days ago, the Chinese food delivery giant did a publicity stunt where one of its drivers flew to Singapore to buy S$13.50 worth of curry puffs.

The driver was not there to do deliveries in Singapore. Instead, he flew there to buy the curry puffs and take them back to a buyer in China.

So, Grab's competitive position in Singapore, and Southeast Asia, remains strong for now.

The question is whether Meituan is signalling an intent to enter the SEA market, using stunts like this one to get its name into the minds of SEA residents.

The company is well known for facing a brutal competitive environment in China--entering a newer market with less price competition would make a lot of sense for it.

If Meituan did enter SEA, it could pose problems for Grab, which has not learned how to survive price wars as Meituan has.

Last year, Meituan, Alibaba and JD began fought a price war so severe that Meituan and JD both became unprofitable as a result. The companies all offered discounts so steep that they lost money on every order. Alibaba's https://t.co/XIdXjF0y83 took massive amounts of market share from Meituan and JD. Eventually, the government stepped in to stop the companies from competing like this. But if Meituan were to bring the price war/aggressive discounting playbook to SEA, would the region's 11 countries be able to coordinate an effective response? If not, would Grab be able to mount a defense itself?

[TrendSpider @TrendSpider]

🚨 S&P REBALANCING

ADDITIONS, S&P 100:
-Dell $DELL
-Palo Alto Networks $PANW
-Arista Networks $ANET
-Sandisk $SNDK

ADDITIONS, S&P 500:
-Bloom Energy $BE
-Everpure $P
-Illumina $ILMN

DELETIONS, S&P 100:
-Honeywell Aerospace $HONA
-Nike $NIKE
-Simon Property Group $SPG
-Colgate-Palmolive $CL

DELETIONS, S&P 500:
-Trade Desk $TTD
-Builders $BLDR
-Molson Coors $TAP

[Northwise Project @InvestNorthwise]

Q2 did not settle the $NBIS debate. It killed the easy version of it.

Revenue grew 454% year over year. AI Cloud ARR exited June at $3.0B. Adjusted EBITDA margin reached 49.7%.

Those numbers prove the business works.

They do not tell investors whether a share of NBIS ultimately captures the economics after hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure, GPUs, leases, replacement capital, debt and dilution move through the system.

We rebuilt our Nebius model (first comment) from the ground up to answer that question.

THE STREET’S 2027 NUMBER IS WRONG

@RealJimChanos recently pointed to a real disconnect.

Street expects roughly $11.5B of 2027 revenue. Nebius should operate around 1.5 GW of average connected capacity that year.

Divide one by the other and you get less than $10M of revenue per connected MW, nowhere near the $20M to $25M per MW midterm contracts or $40M to $50M short-duration contracts Nebius is now signing.

The numbers do not reconcile because the comparison uses the wrong denominator and the wrong timing convention.

Connected facility power is not billable IT power.

Year-end capacity is not average capacity.

Exit ARR is not recognized annual revenue.

New-contract ACV per MW is not fleet-wide revenue per MW.

Our 2027 Base case models roughly:

1.50 GW of average connected power
1.059 GW of average billable IT power
1.596 GW of year-end billable IT power
1.074 GW of new billable capacity at $19.87M of ARR per MW
$31.56B of AI platform exit ARR
$20.01B of recognized group revenue

That is approximately 74% above the Street number Chanos cited.

We are not trying to reconcile our work down to consensus. We think consensus is materially too low because most sell-side models still do not properly model commissioning, PUE, customer acceptance, contract cohorts and partial-year revenue recognition.

The contradiction is not inside Nebius’s contract disclosures. It is inside Street’s model.

WHAT THE BUILD ACTUALLY COSTS

Every megawatt in our forecast now traces to a named facility or sits inside an explicit undisclosed capacity bucket.

We do not assign unidentified capacity to Oklahoma, Spain, Estonia or any other geography just because the company has employees or operating signals there.

In our 2030 Base case, 4,086 MW maps to named sites. Another 2,114 MW remains undisclosed or unannounced.

That uncertainty is visible instead of being disguised as fake geographic precision.

Cost depends on the structure of each site.

Owned greenfield requires the most sponsor capital.

Build-to-suit reduces upfront cash requirements but creates lease claims.

Colocation relies more heavily on partner infrastructure.

The Base 2030 cost stack is approximately:

$18.89M of physical infrastructure cost per connected MW

$37.69M of compute, networking and storage per incremental active IT MW

$59.30M of total cash build cost per incremental active IT MW

Management has described the current capital stack as roughly 20% data-center implementation and 80% GPU deployment. Our 2026 bottom-up model lands at approximately 17.4% physical infrastructure and 82.6% compute.

The resulting cumulative Base growth CapEx from 2026 through 2030 is roughly $285B.

That is the number investors have to confront. Not because demand is weak, but because extraordinary demand still has to be physically delivered.

MARGINAL CONTRACT PRICING IS NOT FLEET PRICING

The bull-side shortcut is just as important to evaluate as the bear side. (and we address some very well formed analyses from @JonahLupton and @meeijer in the report)

You cannot take the best contract Nebius signs today and apply it to every MW operating in 2030.

Our 2027 Base cohort is composed of long-duration investment-grade contracts, core midterm contracts and short-duration scarcity capacity.

The weighted headline economics are roughly $21.6M per MW.

After realization adjustments, the cohort enters at $19.87M per billable MW.

But each cohort expires and reprices on its own schedule. The installed fleet contains different hardware generations, contract durations, customer types and renewal economics.

That is why Base realized fleet revenue reaches roughly $19.19M per average billable MW in 2030 while the newest cohort enters above $21M.

Both figures are correct. They measure different things.

Our Base operating model reaches:

2026 revenue: $3.2B
2027 revenue: $20.0B
2028 revenue: $45.9B
2029 revenue: $73.9B
2030 revenue: $103.2B

2030 adjusted EBITDA reaches approximately $56.1B at a 54.4% margin.

EBITDA IS NOT WHAT THE OWNER KEEPS

Michael Burry’s @michaeljburry depreciation criticism gets butchered by both sides.

Accounting life, physical life, commercial life and economic productivity are not the same thing.

$CRWV is recontracting A100 capacity into 2029 despite the architecture launching in 2020. That is strong evidence that older GPUs do not become commercially worthless after two or three years.

It does not mean an old GPU retains frontier pricing forever.

It also does not answer the power-opportunity-cost problem. A functioning accelerator can still deserve replacement if newer hardware produces several times more value from the same scarce, permitted and energized MW.

So our model separates GAAP depreciation from normalized replacement capital.

In Base:

Revenue: $103.2B
Adjusted EBITDA: $56.1B
GAAP depreciation: approximately $40.0B
Interest expense: approximately $5.0B
Normalized replacement reserve: approximately $33.1B
Normalized owner free cash flow: approximately $16.0B

In Bear, Nebius still reaches approximately $62.8B of revenue and $29.5B of adjusted EBITDA.

Normalized owner free cash flow is negative $10.3B.

That is the point.

A company can become enormous and still be a poor investment if maintaining the machine consumes more capital than the machine produces.

WHO FUNDS THE BUILD DECIDES THE STOCK OUTCOME

Our financing waterfall runs through customer prepayments, internal operating cash, secured debt, strategic-asset monetization and common equity, in that order.

Across the Base forecast, cumulative funding includes approximately:

$96.5B of customer prepayments
$98.1B of secured and project debt
$2.3B of strategic-asset monetization
$12.0B of common equity

Customer prepayments are not free money.
They may require lower pricing, longer duration, priority access or other commercial concessions.

The exact counterfactual cost is not publicly disclosed, so we stress it rather than inventing a precise answer.

The share-count dispersion is where the model becomes violent.

2030 fully diluted shares:
Bear: approximately 686.8M
Base: approximately 445.0M
Bull: approximately 402.6M

Bear builds less infrastructure than Bull but issues dramatically more stock because weaker contract quality reduces prepayments and debt capacity exactly when capital becomes most expensive.

That is why the same business can support radically different shareholder outcomes without requiring AI demand to disappear.

HYPERSCALERS ARE A FINANCING BRIDGE, NOT THE END STATE

Arkady’s position is the right one: hyperscalers are friends today and competitors tomorrow.

The large Microsoft and Meta contracts provide cash flow, prepayments, investment-grade collateral, utilization and proof that Nebius can deliver at scale.

Nebius is using those contracts to finance the infrastructure and platform it needs to broaden beyond them.

The long-term thesis is not that Microsoft rents Nebius GPUs forever.

It is that Nebius uses today’s hyperscaler economics to build Token Factory, Aether, managed inference, open-model support, enterprise relationships and an asset-light distribution layer before those customers internalize more capacity.

The Base case includes 1.5 GW of partner-financed capacity by 2030, producing approximately $9.75B of revenue at a 70% margin.

Delivering the same revenue through owned infrastructure would require roughly 490 MW of billable IT capacity and close to $29B of additional CapEx.

That is why the asset-light model could matter so much. It is also why we refuse to value it as proven software economics before it scales.

WHAT WE PUBLISHED

The operating model is public.

The site-by-site capacity schedule, connected-to-billable conversion, build-cost engine, contract cohorts, replacement-capital logic, financing waterfall, debt treatment, dilution mechanics and principal risks are all laid out in full.

Premium members receive the Bear, Base and Bull per-share valuations, scenario probabilities, probability-weighted target, present value, required-return framework, action bands and the downloadable 38-tab workbook behind the research.

Memberships are Northwise’s only revenue source. No ads, affiliate links, sponsored coverage or paid placements.

We also launched the rebuilt Northwise site at https://t.co/pIi4VZ26OL.

It is no longer a chronological pile of articles.

Research now connects through company pages, models, related theses, portfolio activity and structured filters. Premium members can access live valuation outputs and downloadable workbooks, while free accounts can follow companies, save research and receive alerts.

The core Nebius question is no longer whether AI demand exists.

It is whether the company can convert an unprecedented physical build into durable fleet economics without allowing debt, leases, replacement capital and dilution to absorb the value before it reaches common shareholders.

That is the problem our rebuilt model is designed to solve.

[Michael Sikand @michaelsikand]

$KRKNF Q4 earnings update: Anduril ramping, C$222M in orders, Iran catalyst, and uplisting.

Today's earnings call was full of easter eggs, so here are the top takeaways for asymmetric investors 🪺🦑

1) Can we acknowledge what a gem this business is? Most small cap defense stocks are shitcos that aren't profitable. This is a small cap drone battery stock that is guiding for 65% revenue and 80% EBITDA growth this year. 2025 revenue grew only 12%, but gross profit jumped 42% and gross margins expanded from 49% to 62%. Q4 alone hit 70% gross margins. Quality is the story as this is business is BOTH profitable and rapidly scaling.

2) Anduril ramp. The Halifax battery facility is live, albeit being delayed, now bringing total battery capacity to C$200-250M annually but get this. CEO Greg Reid for the first time ever addressed the idea of building MORE battery capacity specifically in the United States (ahem, Anduril's factory in Rhode Island). This is huge and invalidates the bear case that Kraken can't meet Anduril demand. I am assuming Kraken has to see a US Navy order (I think it's possible this comes this year or next) to justify committing to Anduril and Anduril commiting to full production and vice versa.

3) Iran / Strait of Hormuz tailwinds are real. Greg called mine counter measures demand "urgent operational requirements" for multiple navies. Kraken built up inventory precisely for this moment and expects to win share from larger peers because they can move faster as a smaller company. KATFISH which is Kraken's towed mine hunting vehicle is turning the corner as a result of this trend as MCM becomes a procurement supercycle.

4) It's gonna be a HUGE year with a beat looking pretty clear. $87M in product orders YTD plus ~$50M services business annual run rate already puts Kraken at ~80% of the midpoint of 2026 guidance. Combined YTD orders: ~$222M across Kraken and Covelya, the company they just acquired. Greg cautioned against annualizing it given the massive hype around subsea intelligence tech right now, but the pro-forma entity is already operating at an incredible scale.

5) TSX uplisting is happening this year. It "remains on our roadmap for 2026," with timing tied to the Covelya close. Graduating off the Venture exchange opens the door to institutional capital that's currently locked out, as institutions hold just 20% of the float. This is another major catalyst.

My thinking: Kraken stock continues to be the vast majority of my personal portfolio. It is profitable, attractively valued, has a large moat, is extremely fast-growing, and well-managed. I can genuinley sleep easy at night knowing I'm loaded into this stock. I think it will outperform the vast majority of the market and is sitting at a support level. Could I be missing out on some photonics upside right now? Probably. Is it worth chasing companies in the short-term I have less conviction in? Usually not. I've made some epic trades in the last 6 months with my actively traded capital like $AAOI +180%, $BE +120%, $AEHR +70%, $SOI.PA +60%, $IQE +100% and for now, that's satiating my short-term asymmetric appetite.

Kraken's long term prospects are tied to the autonomous defense supercycle which in my opinion is the best risk adjusted investment category. It gets all the benefit of AI with the resilience of long-term defense spending and contracts, which can cushion these businesses in an AI bubble downturn. How can you not be long Anduril?

The underwater defense supercycle is just getting started, and finally just got mainstream attention with the CENTCOM literally citing the deployment of "underwater drones" in the Strait. I believe the Iran war has firmly put mine countermeasures, naval warfare, torpedos, blockades, shipping lanes back at top of mind and Kraken is the best stock to benefit from all that attention.

I look forward to continuing to cover Kraken Robotics for the retail investor community. Thanks to those who read my posts and support me as a full-time stock content creator.

[amit @amitisinvesting]

$PLTR

Woah.

The Department of War is saying that after the Maduro Raid, Anthropic called Palantir and asked if their models had been used to help with the operation. Anthropic was not happy about their tech being involved.

Palantir then lets the DoW know about this because of the concerns Anthropic was bringing up which leads to the entire fall out as the DoW gets pissed off that Anthropic is trying to investigate highly classified information and essentially boss them around on how to use the tech.

This is pretty incredible but it once again reinforces something that most of the shorts don't really understand: Palantir is the most important software in the world and involved in almost every major geopolitical event.

Does that mean it will trade at a premium? Yes, but if valuation was the only concern, then it would have been very easy to always find an issue with Palantir. There is a much, much deeper story.

Anthropic's models orchestrated through Palantir's software is what allowed the government to successfully execute Midnight Hammer, if Claude leaves the picture...guess what doesn't? Palantir. Their environment will still be the structure by which any new model gets deployed and that is where ALL the value comes from, along with their ability to actually work highly classified and regulated environments with mission critical situations.

The market seems to be recognizing that again as Palantir gets above $150.

[Peter Frankopan @peterfrankopan]

This index never fails to deliver

[Paper Bozz @PaperBozz]

$PYPL has been in a brutal three-month downtrend. Oscillators scream we are oversold and due for a reversal. $55 is critical support; breaking below could drop the stock to the $50 area.

This is a multi-year base formation and a thoroughly beaten-down stock. If management shows even a tiny bit of enthusiasm in the next earnings call, we could see this stock gap up. This is the stock that's due for a re-rating.

Targets, support, and resistance levels are shown in the chart.

Chart created with Webull Desktop App.

[FinanceIntel @finance_intell]

$PYPL

My PayPal Q4 predictions are below⬇️

Revenue - $8.83B
EPS - $1.34
Net Income - $1.23B

Active Customer Accounts - 440M
Total Payment Volume - $485B
Transaction Take Rate - 1.65%
Transaction Margin - 45.7%
Total Payment Transactions - 6.65B

Shares Outstanding - 918M

No crazy formulas to work this out, following tends and we will see how close I am in a couple of weeks.

Happy to hear your thoughts below.

[Couch Investor🛋️ @Couch_Investor]

$PYPL PayPal will report its fourth quarter results and have the call on Feb. 3 before the market opens.

Get the popcorn, tissues, and bag ready.

[Compounding Lab @CompoundingLab]

Today I am delighted to share an updated $PYPL DCF valuation model.

PayPal doesn’t need to be great - just less misunderstood. At a 29% discount to intrinsic value, buybacks + margin normalization can drive ~12% annual alpha as valuation mean-reverts.

Key assumptions:

1. Explicit 10Y growth @ 6-4% (https://t.co/SaakqD9Ekw).

PayPal is pivoting its strategy under CEO Alex Chriss to reignite growth through several key initiatives:

☑️ Fastlane by PayPal: A new one-click guest checkout experience designed to increase conversion rates for merchants. This is seen as a major competitor to Apple Pay and Shopify’s Shop Pay.

☑️Unbranded Processing (Braintree): While this has lower margins than branded PayPal, it remains a high-volume revenue driver, processing payments for companies like Uber and Airbnb.

☑️Monetization of Venmo: Improving the take rate on Venmo through debit cards, business profiles, and the "Pay with Venmo" feature at major retailers.

☑️Expansion into SMBs: The launch of "PayPal Open" aims to consolidate services for small and medium businesses, offering a unified platform for payments, credit, and risk management.

During the 2025 Investor Day, management shared "Longer-term Ambitions" that suggest 10% growth in Transaction Margin Dollars; however, I am taking a conservative view and assuming 6-4% growth within the explicit 10 years. Notable observation – there was not even one year in the prior decade when PayPal revenue declined. Even a high-flying competitor like Block ($XYZ) had a negative 2022, but PYPL did not.

2. Long-term growth in perpetuity @ 2.6% (Global economic growth projection https://t.co/CgFs5X7hm7).

3. WACC @ 9.4%. Implied market return used in calculation is 8.2% (https://t.co/4GROvDg8uJ).

4. Fin sector EBITDA exit multiple of 10 (https://t.co/3n3NBTCDWN) .

5. Tax rate 21% (calculated from 2024 P&L).

6. Reinvestment: The input that drives reinvestment is the most recent Financial Sector Sales to Capital ratio = 1.1.

Bull case

✅ Strong Free Cash Flow = Self-Correcting Valuation
✅ Margin Recovery Is Underappreciated
✅ Growth Doesn’t Need to Be Exciting
✅ Risk Narrative Is Over-Discounted
✅ Platform simplification improves UX and conversion

Conclusion: priced attractively enough to maintain a small position (2-3% of portfolio).

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🇺🇸 AI IS BOOMING FOR STOCKS, BUT REGULAR PEOPLE ONLY HEAR JOB LOSSES AND HIGHER BILLS

Chamath’s point is basically this: that viral “stop AI progress” vibe didn’t spread because it was funny. It spread because a lot of people think it makes sense.

He says Big Tech created a PR problem by making AI look like a rich-people money loop with deals, capital, and stocks going up.

Meanwhile regular families hear a different story about higher power bills, job cuts, and their kids’ future getting squeezed.

His fix is blunt: stop the billionaire flexing and start delivering measurable benefits people can actually feel.

"Politicians have an incredible sense of self-preservation.

It went viral [the Bernie Sanders video about stopping AI progress] not because it sounded so crazy, but because to some people it sounded rational and reasonable.

We have a huge perception issue in AI.

A small percentage of people benefit, and at the tail end of it everybody reads about what’s about to fall on their head, electricity prices, jobs, and their children’s jobs.

Enough of the stupid haircuts, dumb watches, ugly clothes, and ostentatious displays of wealth, it has to stop."

Source: @chamath / @theallinpod

[GenZ Investor @investingbyGenZ]

This chart from Shift4’s ( $FOUR ) Investor Day is a good reminder of why $PYPL trades at such a low multiple.

PayPal’s past performance hasn’t been great — growth has slowed, margins lag peers, and the market needs to see a clear inflection for the stock to re-rate. Until something materially changes, the multiple makes sense.

What stands out is that Shift4 trades at almost the same multiple, despite objectively stronger growth and profitability. That gap in operating performance vs. valuation is hard to ignore.

[The Long Investor @TheLongInvest]

$PYPL is a $170 stock at $61.

At this point, it is clearly an image issue.

A bank charter is a significant change in direction

Opens them up to Loans, Investments, Crypto holdings, as well as being the leading global payments system.

FWD PE: 10
EPS: +15% Next Year
Net Margin: +15%
Aggressive Share Buyback program.

It is not uncommon for a share price to consolidate for 3 years but eventually the price reverts back to its Fair Value

I expect the same here.

[Wall St Engine @wallstengine]

BofA Downgrades $PYPL to Neutral from Buy, Lowers PT to $68 from $93

Analyst comments: "PayPal effort to reinvigorate growth in its core branded checkout is taking longer than expected and limits near-term upside, in our view. We had expected product innovation and the upgraded checkout experience to drive increased usage of the PayPal button at checkout. Instead, 4Q will see a step down in branded checkout growth and 2026 will be an investment year. We still think PYPL’s 400M+ consumers and merchant accounts and the faster pace of innovation under new management are a positive but we think risk-reward is balanced until there is more visibility that the turnaround is taking hold."

Analyst: Jason Kupferberg

[Lincoln Invests @LincolnCarter0]

$PYPL

Per @Reuters - positive news from 🇨🇳

excited to see what developments or announcements they bring out - one thing for sure is $PYPL execs are definitely not idling around

[Juan @JuanRodrig07]

$PYPL PayPal downgraded to Neutral from Buy at BofA

BofA lowers price target to $68 from $93 😳

‘The firm had expected product innovation and the upgraded checkout experience to drive increased usage of the PayPal button at checkout, but instead Q4 will see a step down in branded checkout growth and 2026 will be an investment year’

$PYPL down 1.8% in pre-market trading 🔴

[Tannor Manson @Futurenvesting]

I honestly don't know how you can make payments any more frictionless than $PYPL.

I didn't have to fill out my name or address because PayPal gave it to the merchant. They offered me interest-free Pay In 4 with autopay (Money is better in my pocket than theirs) & they already had my cards on file.

It was 3 clicks in total, 1. Pay With PayPal, 2. Select Pay-In-4. 3. Confirm. DONE

$PYPL can sell my "loan" to KKR, the merchant gets a customer, I did my holiday shopping in 2 seconds, Win-Win-Win.

[Yassir Cheema @Yassircheema]

$Pypl
CFO literally tanked the stock deliberately so that they could buy back cheaper.
I don't know if I should be happy or sad?