Vantix Research

Definite optimism in a world of indefinite thinkers.

[CV Research @CVResearch_]

$STM
STMicroelectronics is filed under "boring European auto chips."

Here's what's underneath:

The radio silicon inside roughly 9 of every 10 satellite-internet terminals on Earth comes from ST. That business is growing 36% a year, sits on a decade-long $SPCX partnership.

It's also quietly arming the humanoid wave. Every humanoid robot carries dozens of joints, and each one needs a chip to drive the motor, a sensor to position it, and a controller to run it. ST makes all three, and it's building the robotics platform alongside Nvidia. You don't have to guess which robot company wins. ST is inside all of them.

Its microcontrollers are the most-used on the planet, five years running, held in place by software millions of engineers refuse to migrate off. Rich margins, still growing double digits, barely moves with the cycle.

And the kicker, ST ran a 46% gross margin two years ago. It's at 34% today with its fabs half empty. Refill them and earnings don't recover, they multiply.

The AI-photonics story everyone's buying it for?

The weakest piece of the whole thing. The real value is buried in the segments nobody bothers to read.

We broke all of it down, the engines, the math, and where we think it lands, link below!

[Vantix Research @VantixResearch]

@pequityresearch Thanks brother! 🤝

[Vantix Research @VantixResearch]

Free Deep Dive:
https://t.co/4hMVUNjw0r

[Vantix Research @VantixResearch]

$MIAX
Everyone's talking about Kalshi and Polymarket valuations.

Nobody noticed $MIAX is sitting on a 10% stake in a Robinhood + Susquehanna prediction-market venture. They sold 90% of a CFTC-licensed exchange, booked a $50M gain, and kept the upside for free.

And it's the LEAST interesting thing about this stock.

Underneath the trading volume everyone fixates on is a recurring, 51% margin business that grows whether or not a single contract trades. Q1: revenue +40%, EBITDA +66%, margin from 43% to 51%. The market prices it like a volatility bet. It's a toll road.

Then the real prize: for 40 years nobody could touch $CBOE's SPX/VIX monopoly. Everyone who tried lost.

$MIAX found the one structural way in, Bloomberg's index + OCC cross-margining the incumbents can't copy without blowing up their own economics.

A 51% margin compounder, taking share, funding a shot at the most profitable franchise in the exchange industry, with a stack of free call options the market can't even see.

Deep dive out now!👇

[Vantix Research @VantixResearch]

$KRKNF / $PNG.V
UK and France are leading a 40-nation mine clearance operation in the Strait of Hormuz. Royal Navy loading RFA Lyme Bay at Gibraltar. Armed Forces Minister Al Carns on the record: insurance underwriters need "absolute certainty" before the strait reopens, and the autonomous sonar capability being loaded is what provides it.

The photo shows a Kraken AquaPix MINSAS sensor on a Hydroid REMUS, prepared by the Royal Navy's Mine and Threat Exploitation Group. Peter Hunter founded Hydroid. He sits on Kraken's board. The REMUS-AquaPix integration has been operational for years. The Anglo-French stack now executing in the Gulf runs Sonardyne navigation, Chelsea Technologies sensors, Forcys harbor security, and AquaPix SAS payloads. Kraken acquired the first three through the Covelya transaction announced early March.

Kraken is continuing to execute, and this is just the beginning of subsea robotics!🦑

https://t.co/GZ5ukqdXOj

[Vantix Research @VantixResearch]

Brett's analysis is sharp, and your Set 3 point is 100% right. It'll be discussed all year, but on mechanics:

The one-year deferral works for individual obligated parties, not the system. Bank goes negative by YE27 on Set 2 alone. Deferral shifts who retires what when. Doesn't create new RINs.

Set 3 timing actually pressures buyers to buy now. Set 3 is due Oct 31, 26, refiners have to make 26-27 compliance decisions before clarity. Uncertainty pulls buying forward, not back.

Brett's three Set 3 paths all leave the moat intact. Option 1 preserves D4 with D5 coprocessing that doesn't qualify for 45Z (best case for MRL). Option 2 modestly eases D4, but the §45Z + CI moat holds independently of RFS. Option 3 drops D4 but finalizes IRR, which stacks on §45Z and doubles the import penalty for foreign-fed competitors.

Variance is on D4 magnitude, not direction. "Limited 2028 capacity" is exactly the moat.

Political risk is definitely there, but EPA had the moment to break the program on March 26.

[Vantix Research @VantixResearch]

$CLMT
The Trump-era Department of Energy publicly names one company on its website as the producer of "about half of all North American SAF and about 12% of all global SAF through 2030."

$1.44B in federal financing at 4.884% fixed. 100M gallons of fuel pre-sold at $1-2/gal premium pricing. The lowest production cost in North America.

The market values it like a leveraged specialty refiner.

Six of its main competitors are gone or idled. The company that pioneered commercial SAF in 2016 just signed a 70-million-gallon supply agreement as the customer.

In 2027, the federal RIN bank goes negative for the first time in 20 years. The forward curve hasn't priced it. A contractual force-monetization clock activates inside the subsidiary on August 5, 2027.

Stock at ~$36. The specialty business standalone is worth $22-26/share. The SAF asset (the one DOE just called the largest in North America) is essentially free.

Deep dive is live, link below!

Also a big shout-out to @Zerosumgame33, @GavMcCracken, and @toiletkingcap for the original coverage and introducing me to the play!

[Vantix Research @VantixResearch]

Good catch! That line's worded backward.

The 26-27 window comes from the §45Z domestic-feedstock requirement (effective post-2025), not the half-RIN deferral. Asian UCO, Indonesian palm, and Brazilian sugarcane don't qualify for the PTC starting now. That's the actual moat.

The half-RIN penalty is a separate RFS provision deferred to 2028. Stacks on top once it kicks in.

[Vantix Research @VantixResearch]

Appreciate it bro!

The punt only works if there's a bank to pull from. Set 2 alone takes it to around -930M by YE27. You can't defer compliance into a year where the RINs you need don't physically exist.

SRE was the lobbying lever, and EPA already closed it. March 26 rule reallocated 70% of 23-25 exemptions back into 26-27. Future SREs flow back the same way.

Trump EPA had every chance to gut Set 2 and instead locked the highest BBD volumes in the program's 20-year history. That was the tell.

Set 3 risk is real. But the trade is on Set 2.

[Vantix Research @VantixResearch]

https://t.co/NfKExo6MEC

[The Observer @TheObserverCap]

https://t.co/5BjpuFwdTC

[Vantix Research @VantixResearch]

https://t.co/f1xcTUO0iv

[Vantix Research @VantixResearch]

$EOS.AX | $EOPSF
A $500 drone forces a $2M interceptor off the rail.

The math is simple: the attacker runs out of money last.

Every NATO procurement office has circled the same conclusion. Kinetic interceptors don't scale against mass drone warfare.

One Australian company claims to have inverted the equation entirely.

Speed of light. <10¢ per shot. Infinite magazine. Zero US components.

That last part is the part nobody's pricing correctly.

ITAR doesn't tax exports. It vetoes them. Every American laser weapon needs Washington's permission to sell. EOS's Apollo needs none.

One regulation. Two markets. One company that can sell to both.

I just published a free deep dive, link below.

[Vantix Research @VantixResearch]

Free Deep Dive:
https://t.co/EaqukebVzI

[Vantix Research @VantixResearch]

The free $XK4 Gabler Group deep dive is live.

What I found:

The founder wrote one of three textbooks MIT uses to teach submarine design. His company supplies the mast systems those submarines can't function without. Three companies on earth do this. The switching cost isn't contractual. It's architectural.

SubCtech batteries power everything from US Navy deep-sea systems to a vehicle built to explore Jupiter's moon Europa. They're tripling production capacity this year (like $KRKNF but more offshore-focused).

Develogic sells titanium housings directly to the US Navy under a sole-source, no-competition contract. Three consecutive orders.

The most underpriced monopoly in European defense, or am I wrong?

[Vantix Research @VantixResearch]

Most people think $XK4 is just a boring submarine company.

It's not. It's four companies hiding inside one ticker.

Gabler Maschinenbau: The 63-year-old original. Masts on 185 submarines across 25 navies. Navies are locked in for 40 years per boat.

Develogic: Underwater acoustic modems, seafloor surveillance landers, autonomous sensors sitting silently at harbor entrances. A larger NATO country has already deployed them and is working with them on automated threat classification.

SubCtech: Acquired months before the IPO. Lithium-ion battery systems for offshore and UUV/AUVs. And right now they are in the process of tripling their production facility to meet demand. (a baby $KRKNF)

https://t.co/cHsAizGZXI: Maritime AI out of Kiel. Raw ocean data turned into defense intelligence. Google Maps of the ocean floor.

Free deep dive out tomorrow. 🚨

[Vantix Research @VantixResearch]

Gabler Group ($XK4)
In 1962, a former submarine chief engineer named Ulrich Gabler started a company in Lübeck, Germany to build what no one else could. The systems that let submarines see, breathe, and communicate.

63 years later, his technology is inside nearly 1,000 masts on 185 submarines across 25+ allied navies. There are only two other companies on Earth that do this. Once designed into a sub, you're locked in for 40+ years. The aftermarket alone runs ~40% of revenue.

Last year revenue hit €62M. Margins: 28%. Backlog: €359M. Market Cap: ~€275.9M. And Europe just kicked off the largest rearmament cycle since the Cold War.

They quietly IPO'd in Frankfurt. Almost no one covered it.

Deep dive coming soon.

[Vantix Research @VantixResearch]

Gabler Group ($XK4)
In 1962, a former submarine chief engineer named Ulrich Gabler started a company in Lübeck, Germany to build what no one else could. The systems that let submarines see, breathe, and communicate.

63 years later, his technology is inside nearly 1,000 masts on 185 submarines across 25+ allied navies. There are only two other companies on Earth that do this. Once designed into a sub, you're locked in for 40+ years. The aftermarket alone runs ~40% of revenue.

Last year revenue hit €62M. Margins: 28%. Backlog: €359M. Market Cap: ~€275.9M. And Europe just kicked off the largest rearmament cycle since the Cold War.

They quietly IPO'd in Frankfurt. Almost no one covered it.

Deep dive coming soon.

[Vantix Research @VantixResearch]

Every AI silicon photonics chip shipping today is built on a wafer from one company. Not Nvidia. Not TSMC. A €2B French company called Soitec (SLOIF/SOI.PA). $SOI

AI data centers are hitting a physical wall. Copper wires can't move data fast enough between GPUs without burning too much power. The industry is replacing copper with light. Silicon photonics chips convert electrical signals into photons and send them through tiny channels carved into silicon.

Those chips need a specific layered wafer to work. Without it, light leaks, the signal dies, and the chip is useless. Soitec makes that wafer using a proprietary process called Smart Cut, protected by 4,300+ patents built up over 30 years. No one has replicated it.

They're the sole qualified supplier to Tower Semiconductor, GlobalFoundries, and TSMC for photonics-grade wafers. Tower is 5x-ing its silicon photonics capacity this year. Every wafer is a Soitec order. TSMC's new COUPE silicon photonics packaging enters mass production H2 2026. Nvidia spent $4B on Lumentum and Coherent to lock down optical supply downstream. The upstream wafer monopoly trades at a fraction of those valuations.

But photonics is only part of the story. Soitec's wafers are in the 5G radio chips in every modern smartphone (70%+ market share). They're in the mmWave chips in premium iPhones. They're in the processor running Starlink satellites. They're in the RF filters Skyworks just signed a multi-year deal for. 13 customers in production on their filter platform with 12 more testing.

So why is the stock down 70% from 2021 highs? Smartphones. The industry over-ordered during COVID and now there's a massive inventory correction dragging revenue down.

The market sees a cyclical smartphone parts company at trough earnings. I see the monopoly substrate supplier beneath the AI optical transition, with €1.1B in factory capacity already built, utilization below 60%, and the highest-margin product line growing 34% organically while the rest of the company shrank 29%.

The capex cycle is done. The fabs are built. Now it's about filling them.

Free deep dive below covering the physics, supply chain, moat, financials, and more:
https://t.co/J6yhoJvAZ2

[Vantix Research @VantixResearch]

@KawzInvests The market's sleeping on this one!