The economy digitization is accelerating like never before as illustrated by the rise of Artificial Intelligence and the emergence of the Metaverse, a 3D digital world in which people will direct avatars to play, socialize share experiences, shop, work and learn.
This secular transformation requires a massive upgrade of the technology infrastructure, to support the AI, real-time and 3D requirements of this new generation of applications.
On the sustainability front, the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and tackle the growing population challenge is reshaping traditional industries and giving rise to a new generation of innovations in food, water and clean energies.
A good way to play these innovations is through a multi-thematic portfolio that gives exposure to each theme’s secular growth prospects while offering risk diversification.
The Next Generation Tech certificate reflects Synapse Invest’s strongest convictions across its various themes for a total of 30-40 positions.
The investment manager will have the ability to make allocation decisions based on specific technology developments, earnings potential and/or macro conditions. The portfolio’s exposure to one single theme will usually be below 25%.
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After the latest tariff twists and chips export restrictions to China, initial earnings in the AI space were widely expected. They didn’t disappoint, with both Taiwan Semi and Siemens Energy releasing strong quarterly figures and either maintaining or exceeding full-year expectations. Taiwan Semi, the leading maker of chips whose growth has been buoyed in recent…
It’s been a turbulent few weeks, with tariff uncertainty fueling broader concerns about the macroeconomic outlook and, specifically, about the AI spending environment. Even if semiconductors were initially expected to be spared from tariffs, the prospect of an economic downturn affecting the core businesses of major hyperscalers—such as declining advertising revenues at Google and Meta,…
At last week’s GTC conference, Nvidia provided a glimpse of its upcoming AI chips, including the Rubin Ultra GPU, set to launch in late 2026. This next-generation AI accelerator is expected to consume up to 1.8kW per unit and 600kW per rack, a significant jump from previous models. For comparison, the current GB200 draws 1.2kW…
Almost a year after initial discussions, Google is finally acquiring the privately-held cloud cybersecurity company Wiz for a staggering $33 billion, marking the largest deal in the industry to date, surpassing the $28 billion Cisco’s acquisition of Splunk from two years ago. In recent years, Tech giants have been intensifying efforts to strengthen their cybersecurity…
In recent days, quantum computing has seen significant progress, with Microsoft and D-Wave announcing groundbreaking developments. As detailed in a previous report, a major hurdle in quantum computing has always been the decay of qubits, which leads to coherence loss and computational errors. Indeed, creating qubits involves producing particles that can be electronically controlled, which…
In recent days, SpaceX’s Starlink announced partnerships with two of India’s leading telecom giants, Airtel and Jio, to provide broadband internet services to even the most remote and rural regions of the country. This marks a significant step as Starlink seems poised to finally break into the Indian internet market, the second largest in the…
Another week, another report about the need to enhance the electric power infrastructure in the U.S. with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the local grid, estimating that the state would need the equivalent of 30 additional nuclear plants by 2030 to meet its electricity needs. Meanwhile, PJM, the largest electricity grid operator in…
Alibaba, China’s leading cloud computing platform, impressed investors with a sharp acceleration in cloud revenue growth to +13% year-on-year, up from 7% in the previous quarter and 3% above expectations, driven by triple-digit AI growth. The real standout, however, was Alibaba’s $4.3 billion quarterly capex, marking a 300% year-on-year surge and 80% quarter-on-quarter growth. The…
PJM, the largest electricity grid operator in the U.S., serving 13 states including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland, has received federal approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to fast-track the review of up to 50 new power plant projects. This decision follows President Donald Trump’s national energy emergency declaration and addresses growing concerns…
Palantir, the largest position in both our AI and Cybersecurity portfolios, impressed again last night with revenue growth accelerating for the sixth quarter in a row to 36% (from 30%) and a FY25 revenue growth guidance of 31%, both figures coming 5-10% ahead of expectations. The strong top-line performance sparked another significant margin leverage, with…
The initial panic triggered by DeepShitSeek is starting to subside as more information comes to light. Recent reports indicate that the true cost of their training process was closer to $500 million, not the $6 million initially claimed. Additionally, it appears that DeepSeek’s LLM performance isn’t as groundbreaking as first suggested, with revelations that the…
The rise of the Chinese AI assistant DeepSeek to the top of the iPhone download charts has sent shockwaves through global markets—and, more specifically, the entire AI value chain. The app’s AI model is widely regarded as highly competitive with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other leading models, all while being significantly less expensive to train and…
Bloomberg reported earlier this week that Meta, which successfully launched at the end of 2023 the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, is working on a new generation of wearable devices that are scheduled to ship this year. That includes smart Oakley glasses aimed at athletes and high-end glasses – code-named Hypernova – whose design is closer to the…
As promised during his campaign, President Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency following his inauguration and signed several executive orders aimed at boosting domestic fossil fuel production while reversing many of the clean energy policies from the Biden era. Trump, along with key cabinet members such as Doug Burgum, the newly appointed Secretary of…
It’s been a week full of exciting developments in the world of gaming. While Nintendo is expected to unveil the Switch 2 in coming weeks and to start shipping it in coming months, leaks have already begun to surface, and some accessories for the new console were even showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES)…
Synapse Invest was founded in 2019 with the mission of offering a diverse range of thematic investment products centered around innovation. Our journey began with the launch of our first Actively Managed Certificates (AMCs) in the closing weeks of 2019, and we are now proud to celebrate more than five years of consistent growth and…
Debates about whether we are the peak of the AI infrastructure cycle or close to the peak are popping up on a regular basis as investors are trying to figure out when the inevitable growth slowdown for companies exposed to it (chips, networking) will happen. Broadcom’s latest earnings and recent press reports about xAI spending…
In contrast to classical computers that rely on binary bits and which can have only two states (zero or one), quantum computers rely on the ability of quantum bits, or qubits, to exist in a superposition of both states at the same time. This oddity of quantum physics allows quantum computers to perform certain calculations…
We have been highlighting for months that, even if deploying new solar/wind capacity and building/reopening nuclear plants are key to tackling the power challenge arising from data centers in the medium and long term, these initiatives are unlikely to come online fast enough to handle short-term extra electricity demand. Accordingly, transitory solutions to fill the…
While most software companies, from the small ones (C3.ai, MongoDB…) to the large ones (Adobe, ServiceNow, Salesforce…), are now wannabe AI companies, Palantir is the real deal in our view. The company, known for its software products used by governments/military around the world, has developed over the years an AI platform (AIP) that is quickly…
GE Vernova kicked off the earnings season in style for the electrification/powering AI theme last week, with two of its three main units delivering impressive results. The group’s Power unit (generation equipment) recorded a significant +470bp margin expansion to 11.9% and 34% bookings growth, while the Electrification unit (grid equipment) grew 22% and boasted a…
After Microsoft, that is financing the restart of an idle reactor, Amazon and Google just made the headlines by announcing that they both will bet on a very promising technology, small modular reactors or SMRs. The former (which also acquired earlier this year a data center powered by an adjacent nuclear power plant) will partner…
The upcoming earnings season could be a bit noisy for the cybersecurity players, as violence escalation in the Middle East is likely to have hampered project timelines and delays product innovations in Israel where many cybersecurity firms are located and/or have large R&D teams. It’s probably no coincidence that Q3 VC funding in cybersecurity startups…
Even if there’s been a lot of excitement around AI in the last two years, there’s been a very limited number of pure play IPOs given that the market is dominated by a handful of players in computing (Microsoft, Amazon…), models/software (OpenAI, Anthropic…) and computing hardware (Nvidia, AMD). News that Cerebras, a US-based AI chip…
Following the unexpected success of the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses released at the end of 2023, there’s definitely some traction in the smart glasses space and both Meta and Snap presented in recent days new prototypes in an attempt to take an early lead in what could become a major computing platform in the future.…
On Friday, US electric utility Constellation announced the restart of its Crane nuclear plant, that had been shut down in 2019 for economic reasons, along with a 20-year power supply agreement with Microsoft. The Tech giant will then secure 835 MW of power over 20 years to supply its data centers in the PJM Interconnection,…
Just months after the US Senate passed the ADVANCED Act, a landmark legislation designed to ease the permitting process for nuclear reactors and reduce costs and construction times (see our previous report), various US administrations are moving fast on the nuclear topic. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) indeed exempted Kairos Power from a full environmental…
Earlier this year, Google unveiled an eye-popping text-to-video games model called Genie that allowed to build basic playable games in 2D based on a short description. Six months on, AI in video gaming has made significant advances with gaming giants Roblox and Tencent presenting in recent days their own Generative AI technology that now allows to…
Despite recent concerns around a softening macro, AI spending fatigue and Nvidia’s Blackwell slight delay, the second part of the year and early 2025 are actually shaping up well for the Tech industry. Oracle’s just released FQ1 numbers were highly encouraging and suggested that AI training in data centers remains buoyant, with the company claiming…
Even if cybersecurity remains a top IT priority for most organizations (along with AI, obviously) and, accordingly, keeps growing fast, two events affecting two of the largest cybersecurity vendors have weighed down on investor sentiment this year: Palo Alto’s aggressive pricing policy, fueling concerns about the company’s short-term outlook and potential industry-wide discounting initiatives; and,…
If one needed further evidence that we are heading towards a growing supply/demand imbalance for uranium, last week’s news flow provided it. Kazatompron, Kazakhstan’s state-owned uranium miner (and the world’s largest), announced (again) a cut to its 2025 production forecast due to continued sulphuric acid shortages and delays in construction works at new deposits. The company…
Chinese video game Black Myth: Wukong, an adaptation of the 16th-century Chinese tale “Journey to the West”, has made the headlines this week as it became an instant global hit, claiming more than 1 million concurrent players on gaming platform Steam within an hour of its Tuesday release and 2.2 million players by Wednesday (without…
Despite all the recent tumult in Tech equities recently, optical networking stocks such as Fabrinet and Coherent are quietly nearing or breaking their highs as earnings confirm that a new spending cycle on optical gear from data centers is on track. Last night, Fabrinet reported Q4 revenue growth of 15%, 3% above expectations. If these…
Moore’s law states that the density of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. This empirical law has allowed the manufacturing of cheaper, faster, smaller and more efficient electronic devices for decades. But the pace of this trend is clearly slowing down and the techniques to miniaturize transistors are getting exponentially…
Nokia just announced the acquisition of Infinera (a Big Data portfolio company) for $2.3 billion, representing a 28% premium. Infinera, which is a supplier of optical semiconductors and networking solutions, will allow Nokia to increase the scale of its optical networks business and to raise its exposure to Internet/data center customers that account for roughly…
It’s been a tough H1 for software stocks, which have lagged hardware/semiconductors names by 20-30% on average. While expectations built up last year about the revenue opportunity for many software companies shipping new products with built-in AI, the reality caught up during the latest earnings season with the likes of Salesforce, MongoDB, Workday, Cloudflare and…
The US gave a major boost to its nuclear industry yesterday as the Senate passed the ADVANCED (Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy) Act with overwhelming bipartisan support, and as the DoE announced it would fund up to $900 million to support the deployment of small modular reactors (SMRs). The ADVANCED Act is a…
The 2024 edition of the Computex – a Taipei-based electronics show where many Asian companies are usually showcasing their latest motherboards, PC power supplies or laptops – turned into an AI festival last week with a flurry of non-Asian companies taking the stage to pitch their roadmaps, new chips and systems not only for AI…
It’s been an eventful week for the high performance computing and data center industry as many chip makers, including Nvidia and AMD, and data center suppliers announced new products and architectures during the Computex show in Taiwan. Among the flurry of announcements, we view Super Micro’s introduction of liquid-cooled AI racks and bullish expectations about…
There has been a lot of talk lately about the implications of surging AI usage. While the focus has been on electric power consumption, the water intensity of data centers should also emerge as a major challenge going forward. Indeed, AI is catalyzing a shift towards power-hungry “monster chips” that are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain…
The last couple of weeks have been highly supportive for the nuclear industry, confirming that companies in the uranium/nuclear ecosystem are entering into a new era of growth. It is indeed becoming evident that AI is going to drive electricity demand to new heights with the US Department of Energy undersecretary for infrastructure recently commenting…
There have been signs of improving activity lately on the two leading Metaverse platforms, Roblox and Epic. While the former posted growth in average daily active users in a 17-22% range in recent quarters, the latter opened its Fortnite virtual world to major brands Lego and Disney that have or are in the process of…
Even if it’s a decades-old industry, video games remain an incredibly young business that stands at the forefront of new technologies including, obviously, AI. Since the beginning of the year, AI has been all about multimodal models and notably text-to-video, with OpenAI revealing its generative model Sora. But Google pushed the envelope of what’s possible,…
After some panic selling in recent days sparked notably by the absence of a Super Micro preannouncement, it looks like investor worries could start to ease following a set of strong quarterly figures and encouraging comments from Tesla, Vertiv and Texas Instruments. One of the highlights in the Tesla report was the major ramp-up of…
The disruption caused by Generative AI is not only deeply impacting the Tech industry and (soon) almost any economic activity but it will also have geopolitical, environmental, and energetic consequences. Since the early 2000s, cloud computing has rapidly grown to become the dominant IT platform, delivering any type of digital and/or communication service around the…
Reports have surfaced in the last couple of days about the concerted attempts of large Tech companies including Intel, Qualcomm and Google to break Nvidia’s dominance in data center AI chips by creating an open-source software platform on which developers can build AI models and apps. Indeed, Nvidia’s monopoly on the booming AI training segment…
A lot has been said in the last couple of days about the impressive performances of Nvidia’s latest family of chips, Blackwell. But one thing that has gone largely unnoticed is Nvidia’s shift towards liquid cooling for the first time for the high-end version of its next-generation DGX server subsystem, SuperPOD, that is built on…
At its semi-annual GPU Technology Conference (GTC), Nvidia showcased its latest server-class GPU family, called Blackwell, offering a jump in both computing power and bandwidth and, most importantly, a significant increase in integrated memory. As mentioned in our July 2023 article, memory is the main bottleneck in the training of large GenAI models. As data…
Even if data is widely considered as the oil of the 21st century, it has been largely under-monetized until now. As an illustration, OpenAI developed ChatGPT with massive amounts of data, free of charge… But data-rich companies, such as social media, have taken notice and the situation is rapidly evolving with companies including X and Reddit…
While the discussion about the Metaverse has been centered recently around augmented & virtual reality devices thanks to the Apple Vision Pro launch, it shouldn’t be forgotten that the Metaverse is first and foremost a virtual world where we’ll spend in the future much of our online time to socialize, work and have fun. The…
The cybersecurity sector had a rough ride last week as Palo Alto Networks (a portfolio company), one of the industry leaders, announced an underwhelming billings guidance for both the current quarter (only +2-4%, after +16% in CQ4) and the full year (+10-11% vs +16-17% previously). Amid healthy cybersecurity spending, Palo Alto’s figures clearly came as…
The stellar rise of Generative Artificial Intelligence continues to shake up the whole IT industry. At the end of last week, the world’s largest semiconductor foundry, Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) and the world’s second largest memory maker, SK Hynix, announced a new alliance around the development of AI chips. This news, which has gone almost unnoticed,…
We commented last month that video game maker Epic’s legal victory against Google in its antitrust lawsuit was likely to have serious implications for the app store duopoly and for the mobile gaming industry. As both Apple and Google generally charge commissions of as much as 30% to app developers who have few other options,…
After an initial surge driven by consumer curiosity and “better for you” credentials, plant-based meat growth has stalled as consumers’ expectations in terms of taste, texture, price or degree of processing have not been met. Beyond Meat’s revenue have therefore been declining for six straight quarters. Amid this challenging demand environment, the business models of…
UK-based Darktrace kicked off the cybersecurity earnings season with a robust set of figures and a guidance upgrade, giving confidence that the recent rally in security stocks is sustainable as fundamentals improve. In H1 (calendar H2), Darktrace delivered 27% revenue growth, 3% above expectations, with an EBITDA margin above 19% (100-200bps above consensus) and raised…
This morning, the Chinese administration issued new draft rules for online games aiming to limit spending and tackle game addiction. While the document lacks details, the new rules would introduce spending limits (prohibition of high-priced transactions, recharge limits…) and prohibit certain user engagement methods (rewards for daily log-in and first-time/multiple purchases). We believe that the…
Two days ago, AMD unveiled its long-awaited server-class GPU chip called the Instinct MI300X. This chip is positioned to be a direct competitor to the successful H100, Nvidia’s current Generative AI workhorse. As GenAI models keep on growing in size, memory and the way to access it represent one of the key elements of focus…
Take-Two, one of the largest positions in both our Metaverse and Gaming certificates, is now expected to release in the next couple of weeks the highly anticipated trailer for the next chapter in the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) video game franchise, GTA VI. For those who are not familiar with the franchise, GTA is an…
The Who’s Who of High-Performance Computing (HPC) is currently gathering in Colorado, US for the annual SuperComputing conference (SC23). Halfway through the conference, one trend is pretty clear: the whole IT industry is all in on Generative AI, starting from the chip designers up to the large system builders. Nvidia teased its upcoming server-class GPU…
Driven by the growing awareness prompted by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, global sales of nutraceuticals have seen a substantial upsurge over the last few years. Nutraceuticals are defined as foods that combine the benefits of both nutrients and pharmaceuticals. They are generally categorized into two primary categories: Dietary supplements: vitamins, minerals, enzymes… Functional…
During its recent earnings conference, security and edge computing infrastructure provider Cloudflare highlighted the AI inference opportunity, stating that it has a pipeline of customers (large and small) “interested in putting hundreds of billions of inference tasks on its infrastructure each month” and that it will have rolled out inference optimized GPUs in 100+ of…
The last few weeks have been tough in the clean energy space, with high interest rates not only pressuring stock valuations but also affecting business fundamentals. Notably, higher funding costs sparked wind projects cancellations and a slowdown in residential solar installations. If hydrogen names have not been spared by these funding headwinds and concerns about…
Solar inverter manufacturer SolarEdge posted last night preliminary Q3 results that fell well below expectations (revenue 19% below, gross margin 30% below) following cancellations and pushouts of existing backlog from its European distributors. The company noted higher-than-expected channel inventory and slower-than-expected installation rates from the end of the summer. This weakness in Europe was clearly…
Chip equipment makers have been hit in recent days and weeks by the intensification of export controls to China and by order delays as manufacturers are experiencing troubles in building their new fabs. Most notably, Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC)’s $40 billion Arizona plant is running behind schedule. Accordingly, Dutch equipment giant ASML delivered this morning a…
With the emergence of a new generation of weight loss drugs poised to reshape the healthcare industry, the landscape of consumer diets may also be on the cusp of a massive transformation, sending ripples through the food and beverage sectors. New weight loss drugs known under the acronym of GLP-1, embodied by Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic…
Niantic, the developer of massive mobile hit Pokemon Go, released in recent weeks in collaboration with Japanese game maker Capcom its newest location-based and augmented reality (AR) title, Monster Hunter Now. The game lets users explore the world and achieve missions while fighting gigantic monsters, the AR technology allowing to blend the digital monsters with…
There’s been a lot of attention in recent months about the computing power requirements of Artificial Intelligence and the rise of various pieces of hardware (GPUs, ASICs, TPUs…) used to train massive data models. Surprisingly, there’s been much less hype around software and, specifically, around data science and analytics software that appears as important as…
Eighteen months after initial reports of M&A talks, networking giant Cisco announced the takeover of data analytics and cybersecurity software company Splunk in a massive $28 billion deal (both Cisco and Splunk are portfolio companies). The 32% premium is in line with recent sector transactions and the valuation multiple (6x revenue) is in the low-end…
Electronic Design Automation (EDA) is the bedrock of modern digital transformation, encompassing software-based tools used by all semiconductor companies to design cutting-edge chips and complex integrated circuits that power our technological landscape. EDA has, accordingly, accompanied the growth of the semiconductor industry over the years. Looking forward, the growth pace of the main EDA players,…
As we commented a couple of months ago, generative AI has been emerging as a weapon for hackers, making phishing attempts (emails or texts inviting a user to open a malicious link to steal his/her credentials) bespoke and then much harder to detect, and helping to reduce malware software development cycles and/or rewrite code to…
If the narrative about water scarcity mainly focuses about the impact of shortages on our daily lives and key industries (agriculture, beverages…), a new kind of consumers is also affected and will have to treat and reuse increasing amounts of water: semiconductor companies and, more globally, the data center industry. Silicon wafers undergo multiple steps…
If plant-based food keeps struggling as illustrated by Beyond Meat’s underwhelming metrics in the second quarter, innovation in the alternative protein space keeps going unabated. This is hardly surprising, given that the long-term challenges of the food supply chain remain intact, namely the need to massively increase food production to meet rising demand (2 billion…
The cybersecurity sector has come under pressure over the last couple of days following Microsoft’s introduction of a secure web gateway solution (SWG) called Entra, that complements the Tech giant’s leading franchise in identity/access management and extended detection and response (XDR). SWG – which is one of the main components of Gartner’s defined Secure Access…
Microsoft’s $69 billion takeover of Activision Blizzard has faced many antitrust hurdles since its announcement in January 2022, but the legal challenges now seem to be easing. In the US, a federal judge rejected yesterday the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) request for a preliminary injunction to block the deal, considering that the FTC had not…
If all investors’ eyes are currently focused on increasing microprocessors’ performances and speeds, a bottleneck is nevertheless emerging in AI training. This is called the memory wall, or the growing speed difference between microprocessors and computer memory, hence leaving the processing units idle until the requested/needed data becomes available for computing. The recent explosion of…
Just like solar names, hydrogen stocks have not been spared by the funding concerns that emerged in the wake of the banking crisis a couple of months ago, as most hydrogen projects require tens or even hundreds of million dollars financing. But recent newsflow has been reassuring, with Plug Power reaffirming in recent days its…
Even if data is widely considered as the oil of the 21st century, it has been largely under-monetized until now. As an illustration, OpenAI developed ChatGPT with massive amounts of data, free of charge… But data-rich companies, such as social media, have taken notice and the situation is rapidly evolving with both Twitter and Reddit announcing…
As the growth in data centers’ construction continues at an unabated pace around the world – hence sustaining investments in semis, software, networking, and storage solutions – the rise of Generative AI services (e.g., ChatGPT) is literally triggering a little revolution inside them. The workloads (training and inference) of these Deep Learning models necessitate an…
Since their development by Dupont in the 1930s and subsequent widespread manufacturing by 3M in the 1950s, Polyfluroalkyl substances (PFAS) – commonly known as forever chemicals – have raised significant concerns due to the alarming consequences associated with the accumulation of these chemicals in the human body. Notably, exposure to specific PFAS compounds has been…
As widely expected, Apple unveiled last night its “mixed reality” headset, the Vision Pro, its first new product category since the Apple Watch in 2014. The headset, that will ship early next year in the US, handles two different technologies: virtual reality (VR), that immerses users in a computer-generated virtual world, and augmented reality (AR),…
Nvidia’s last night earnings report was impressive, to say the least. The company notably guided to a 64% top-line growth in Q2 (53% above consensus!), including c.100% year-on-year growth in its data center segment. This strength should not come as a total surprise given that most companies are currently racing to deploy AI applications and…
Newsflow is the video gaming industry is definitely improving after the post-pandemic lull. Nintendo’s latest Zelda set a new record for the series (10 million units sold in 3 days), confirming that consumer spending on well-known franchises remains well oriented and largely unaffected by the macro environment. And importantly, most game publishers are now taking…
The concept of indoor vertical farming gained significant momentum during the Covid-19 crisis as lockdowns exposed the vulnerabilities of the food supply chain and highlighted the need for more reliable and local sources of food. This context, coupled with the sustainability benefits of indoor farms such as reduced water usage, pesticide elimination, and reduced transportation,…
The phenomenal success of Generative AI (GAI) services like ChatGPT or DALL-E has literally triggered an arms race amongst AI’s world leaders as the accuracy level coupled to the creative skills of GAI models are disrupting the $120bn annual revenue generating Web search industry (still heavily dominated by Google) as well as the nascent AI-based…
Water scarcity is a growing concern in today’s world, with more than 3 billion people around the planet already living in water-stressed countries. Moreover, as the global population continues to expand and urbanization accelerates, the demand for clean water is rising rapidly. Consequently, the need for innovative water technologies is becoming more urgent than ever,…
After a tough 2022 year (-7%) dragged down by unfavorable comparisons with a pandemic-driven 2021, videogame content sales in the US are showing signs of life with a 1% growth in February, according to industry tracking group Circana. While this recovery is not impressive yet, hardware spending, which can be viewed as an early indicator…
The so-called Moore’s law, promulgated by Intel’s co-founder Gordon Moore in the mid-60s, states that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (or IC) doubles every two years. Contrary to what many media said and are still saying nowadays, the doubling of IC’s density doesn’t mean that semiconductor chips are twice as powerful every…
If sales of plant-based meat stalled in 2022, there are nevertheless some sources of resilience in the plant-based category with dairy-free milk, and specifically oat milk, keeping growing at a robust pace as illustrated by the Q4 figures from SunOpta (+23% sales growth for its plant-based milks with volumes up double digit, including +37% for…
The easing of the zero Covid policy in China and of the government crackdown on its Tech industry have obviously been a major positive as both Chinese Tech giants and local companies, that often fly under investors’ radar, enjoyed a significant rerating since the end of 2022. Specifically, cybersecurity firms, that were hit by a…
Nvidia’s Gaming revenue in Q4 came out sharply down again (-46% year-on-year) as the company is navigating an unprecedented inventory correction related to the post-pandemic video gaming slowdown (and, to a lower extent, the collapse of demand for crypto mining cards) and is still facing tough quarterly comparisons. Even if the top-line figure was uninspiring,…
Contrary to many innovative industries, water technology companies have been largely absent from the M&A scene in the last couple of years. This is quite surprising given that water technology represents, in our view, an attractive fit for industrial and testing/diagnostics companies seeking to find new avenues of growth and, potentially, to reduce their revenue…
ChatGPT literally took the world by storm since its release in November 2022. The chatbot is so successful that it added 1 million users in only 5 days, slashing the iPhone’s (74 days) and Instagram’s (2.5 months) previous adoption speed records. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, was founded in 2015 and backed by prominent figures…
As alternatives to conventional proteins keep gaining attention from policymakers, food producers and start-ups alike to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and land and water usage, insects are gradually rising as a major sustainable option. When compared to beef, insect protein production consumes 90% less land, 50% fewer resources and produces up to 200 times lower…
Ransomware attacks have been increasing at an alarming rate over the last couple of years (between +50% and +100% according to various sources) with ransomware becoming the preferred method for many cybercriminals to monetize their fraudulent activity. With the emergence of the Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) “business model” in the hackers’ community, this type of attack is…
A milestone was reached in the quest for electrification of the agricultural machinery industry in recent weeks, as CNH, the manufacturer of New Holland and Case IH equipment, unveiled its 120HP “T4 Electric Power Tractor”, the sector’s first all-electric light utility prototype with autonomous features. While autonomous features have already made significant inroads into the…
Over the last couple of months, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed to block two M&A deals in the video game space, first the acquisition of virtual reality start-up Within (that developed a VR fitness app) by Meta and, last week, the blockbuster takeover ($69 billion) of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft. Both legal…
As federal funding to modernize the US water infrastructure is gradually being rolled out and as extreme droughts hit most parts of the world last summer, water companies’ Q3 earnings were mostly overwhelming against a tough macro backdrop, a clear reminder that water is a secular theme will little macro sensitivity. On the infrastructure side…
Despite the post-pandemic gaming slowdown and initial macro headwinds, quarterly reports from game makers have been decent overall, with revenue/bookings hovering between moderate growth (Capcom, Ubisoft, EA, Square Enix, Roblox…) and moderate decline (Tencent, Activision, Take-Two…) and earnings expectations/guidance being materially cut in a very limited number of cases (Roblox, Take-Two). As expected, console and…
The agriculture industry has been slow to embrace new technologies and is still largely non-automated and non-digitized. But technology adoption now seems to be hitting an inflection point with artificial intelligence and robotics capabilities aimed at farming operations making a giant leap, as illustrated by the recent introduction of a fully autonomous tractor by Deere. These…
Even if the gaming industry is still affected by tough comparisons with a pandemic-driven 2021, there are some encouraging signs giving confidence in the 2023 outlook. Notably, console sales, which had been underwhelming due to supply constraints, have been accelerating in the last three months and reached 19% growth in the US in September according…
Semiconductor stocks have suffered an across-the-board selling in recent months thanks to the rapid deterioration of several end-markets (PC, smartphones…) and new export controls imposed by the US government on chips and equipment shipped to China. But this “implosion” could also create buying opportunities as some end-markets and, more specifically, the data center one enjoys secular…
Despite the recent slowdown in the plant-based food category, alternatives to conventional meat keep gaining attention from policymakers, food producers and start-ups alike, amid livestock production producing high greenhouse gas emissions and requiring more land and water per calorie of food than crops. Accordingly, in his recent executive order on ‘biotechnology and biomanufacturing innovation’, Joe…
Crypto hacks are now making the headlines on a regular basis, as illustrated by the $620 million heist of blockchain game Axie Infinity in March or last week’s $160 million hack of crypto market maker Wintermute. With criminal activity involving cryptocurrencies on track to reach a new record after the 2021 peak ($14 billion, up…
As illustrated by Google’s recent acquisition of Mandiant and Cisco’s increasing focus on security, a convergence between tech hardware and cybersecurity software has been taking place, a move that should intensify over coming years. For networking hardware specialists such as Cisco and Juniper, implementing firewalling and threat detection software in their routers and switches is…
In line with recent press reports, Tencent has acquired a 49.9% stake in Ubisoft’s family holding company, Guillemot Brothers Ltd (which owns a 13% stake in Ubisoft), in a deal that values the French video game maker (a portfolio company) around EUR75-80 per share and reflects a premium around 80%. Tencent, which already owned directly…
If California has been a driving force behind the rise of clean energies and adoption of electric vehicles, it could soon take on the same role in the blue revolution. Governor Gavin Newsom recently released a plan called “California’s Water Supply Strategy, Adapting to a Hotter, Drier Future” aimed at improving water supply amid…
Many countries around the world have been hit by record droughts and implemented water restrictions in recent weeks, a harsh reminder that, today, roughly 40% of the people on Earth live in a water stressed region and that this number is expected to climb to 60% in a near future. Secular trends like urbanization, climate…
Many cybersecurity companies, including Fortinet, Cloudflare or Rapid7, reported their quarterly earnings in recent days. While revenue and earnings were overall solid, most companies hinted at increasing deal scrutiny from their corporate customers, lengthening sales cycles and softening growth trends going forward as customers navigate a complex environment and are closely watching their spending amidst…
Identity management specialist Ping Identity (a portfolio company) just announced its acquisition by private equity firm Thoma Bravo for a $2.8 billion enterprise value and a massive 63% premium, marking the sixth multi-billion M&A deal in cybersecurity so far this year. This deal follows the recent SailPoint takeover (also by Thoma Bravo), which was the…
In late June, we argued that a reshaping appeared to be taking place in the sports and energy drink business following the end of the distribution deal between PepsiCo and Bang and reported M&A talks between Monster Beverage and Constellation Brands, a few months after Coca-Cola‘s acquisition of BodyArmor, at a $6.6 billion valuation. We…
Back in 2020, plant-based foods and beverages were all the rage, growing 45% year-on-year as consumers shifted their eating habits during the pandemic toward natural and organic products that are perceived as healthy. Two years on, it’s a very different story: the industry’s growth momentum has stalled to just 6% in 2021 and further deceleration…
Amid general concerns about the macro and corporate spending outlook, it appears that cybersecurity remains an area of strong growth and resilience, as illustrated by the latest Morgan Stanley survey of Chief Information Officers that found that spending on security software was the least likely to be cut among the whole Tech categories (software and…
Over the last few months, some cloud software vendors have faced an unexpected and counter-intuitive risk: the rising efficiency of cloud computing platforms such as Amazon’s AWS stemming from improved chip performances. Cloud-based data storage company Snowflake notably came under the spotlight. It uses AWS cloud to store and process its customers’ data which are…
According to various media reports, semiconductor giant Broadcom is in talks to acquire cloud software infrastructure company VMware. Having started with server virtualization, a software solution that morphs a single and physical server into several virtual ones, VMware gradually added storage and networking virtualization in order to offer a complete infrastructure software stack that allows…
Fertilizer names are currently a source of relative resilience in our Food Revolution portfolio as they ride an exceptional environment (strong farming demand, major supply disruptions) to deliver impressive quarterly figures and/or guidance. Nutrien and CF Industries just reported +64% and +173% Q1 revenue growth, respectively, and EBITDA up 3x or 4x the level achieved…
While there’s been a lot of talk about the increasing number of droughts across the world in relation with climate change (recent restrictions on outdoor watering in Southern California being the latest example), there’s also been, quite ironically, an increasing number of devastating floods as the rapid urbanization pace reduces the land available to absorb…
If there’s one thing about the Metaverse that most experts and observers agree on, it’s that the digital world of the future is going to have massive requirements in terms of computing power, 3D modeling and standardization. A reference in high-performance computing, Nvidia now plans to tackle the two other challenges and become the go-to…
Two weeks ago, we highlighted the need for automated threat detection in an environment where the number of threats is rising exponentially and commented that Google’s recent acquisition of privately held Siemplify could pave the way to other M&A deals in the field of security automation. It looks like things are speeding up with Microsoft…
Before a potential invasion, Russia has reportedly sought to destabilize Ukraine on the cyber front in recent weeks as hackers attacked and placed destructive malware inside tens of Ukrainian government agencies. This prompted the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to warn critical infrastructure operators against possible cyber threats to US assets, reminding that two major cyberattacks…
We have been arguing for more than one year that video gaming assets could attract significant M&A interest from Tech and social media giants and Microsoft’s reported takeover talks with Activision today clearly confirm our view. The deal, if confirmed, would mark a major step-up in Microsoft’s gaming M&A strategy after its purchase of Bethesda…
Agriculture machinery makers put a lot of efforts last year in developing their digital capabilities and autonomous driving technology, as illustrated notably by CNH’s takeover of Raven Industries for $2.1 billion and Deere’s purchase for $250 million of Bear Flag Robotics. These initiatives seem to be bearing fruit as Deere unveiled last week, during the Consumer Electronics Show…
Many cyber-attacks and security breaches made the headlines last year (SolarWinds, Kaseya…). But that was almost nothing compared to the Log4Shell vulnerability present in the Java open-source Apache logging library Log4J that was revealed in early December and sparked a coordinated response from several US agencies (NSA, FBI, CISA…). This dismay is not disproportionate as…
If Facebook’s long-term strategy was not yet clear enough for everyone, its recent name change to Meta unambiguously states the company’s objective to be a major actor in the buildout of Internet’s upcoming (r)evolution, which premises are already starting to be visible through different angles. From the gaming industry’s perspective, the Web’s next iteration will…
Ten days ago, Nike made the headlines when it announced NIKELAND, its own virtual space in Roblox modeled after its real-life headquarters. This move was followed by Adidas, which teased a collaboration with Sandbox, a blockchain-powered virtual world and followed up with a partnership with crypto exchange Coinbase. This sudden rush from large consumer brands to…
Major video games are gradually turning into Metaverse destinations offering to their vast user base a wide range of activities well beyond gaming and including notably social interactions, entertainment and shopping in a 3D world. Roblox, our second largest portfolio company, clearly stands ahead of the pack when it comes to building a Metaverse, as…
Facebook made the headlines last week when it announced a rebranding to Meta, a strategic shift towards the Metaverse and massive investments over coming years to support its ambitions (starting with $10 billion in 2021). While the timing of these announcements could have much to do with an attempt to divert attention from recent bad…
The increasing climate change awareness over the last years, from both governments and consumers, has resulted in the fight to eradicate greenhouse gases becoming a global priority. As approximately one-third of CO2 emissions are attributed to agriculture, the sector has come under the spotlight to implement changes in the way it produces food. Among various…
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, cybercrime activity has been on a tear (e.g. +130% for ransomware) as companies had no choice but to open up their IT network to remote workers and devices, often struggling to comprehensively secure it on time, leaving entry points for malicious attacks. Interestingly, 50% of these security failures…
Corporate sustainability is gradually waking up to the global water risk, with large companies such as PepsiCo and Facebook pledging in recent weeks to become net water positive by 2030, meaning that they will contribute more water to the ecosystem than they consume. After “carbon neutral”, “net water positive” could soon become the new green…
Recently, we commented that the Internet-of-Things (IoT) was finally gaining traction in the industrial world and was on track to become 5G’s killer app as it provides industrial companies with the opportunity to attach a wide range of digital services and features (monitoring, analytics…) to their installed base of cars, factory machines or robots. The…
There has been a lot of talk recently about the Metaverse, with notably Mark Zuckerberg commenting during Facebook’s latest earnings call that “we believe this is going to be the successor of the mobile Internet … In addition to being the next generation of the Internet, the Metaverse is also going to be the next…
On August 3rd, California water regulators voted a water restriction impacting thousands of farmers in the Sacramento and San Joaquin watersheds. Permission is now required to divert more than 55 gallons of water per day from rivers or streams. This (ridiculously low) limit further illustrates one of the worst droughts in California, which is in…
If nothing is done, there will be more plastics in the ocean than fish by 2050 according to the World Economic Forum. As a result, regulators and consumers alike are developing an increased awareness towards the issue of microplastic pollution that humans drink, eat and breathe. Accordingly, the packaging industry is set to undergo radical…
After weeks of heavy rain and floods in large parts of Europe, it can be weird to talk about water shortages and solutions to tackle this challenge. But the reality is that, today, roughly 40% of the people on earth live in a water stressed region and this number is expected to climb to 60%…
Netflix’s long-awaited entrance into the video game market was “officialized” last week when news broke that the company had hired a gaming industry veteran, Mike Verdu, to lead the initiative. This is a natural move for Netflix, that needs to find new avenues of growth beyond an increasingly competitive video streaming market and that has…
Leading agriculture machinery maker CNH announced yesterday the takeover of Raven Industries, a portfolio company, for $2.1bn including debt. Raven is mainly known for its precision agriculture and autonomy technology with a range of products covering machinery guidance & steering, field computers and data management. Raven is also active in two other businesses (engineered films and…
A couple of weeks ago, we commented that the Augmented Reality (AR) theme was heating up with several major new games (Pikmin, the Witcher…) and devices (Snapchat spectacles) hitting the market and that AR glasses could take over smartphones as the new major gaming platform in a near future as they offer more immersive AR…
Nearly one million cancer cases have been neglected across Europe due to the pandemic according to the European Cancer Organisation. In the US, the National Cancer Institute documented that nearly ten million cancer screenings were missed nationwide during the coronavirus outbreak. Due to ignored appointments and cancer screenings, Covid-19 will therefore, unfortunately, cause indirect increases…
It’s already been 5 years since the Pokemon Go phenomenon brought Augmented Reality (AR) to the masses, with the game developed by Niantic (held by both Google and Nintendo) reaching more than 500 million users by the end of 2016 and still remaining at the top of app store downloads in 2021. Despite this initial…
The cyber-attack which recently struck one of the biggest oil infrastructures in the US, the Colonial Pipeline, is the latest in a series of high-profile attacks targeting critical US infrastructures. Back in December, the Sunburst/SolarWinds infiltration operation made the headlines as it hit the US Treasury, the US Department of Commerce as well as most…
While it was already on an upward trajectory, consumption of plant proteins recorded a pandemic-related acceleration in 2020 with U.S. retail plant-based foods growing 27% to $7 billion and plant-based meat 45% to $1.4 billion. Consumption continued to be driven by rising awareness to natural organic foods which are perceived as healthier. As many meat…
Microsoft just announced the acquisition of medical artificial intelligence software maker Nuance in a deal worth $19.7bn, that represents a 23% premium to the last closing price. Nuance, one of our Digital Health portfolio companies, is focused on speech recognition software that allows physicians to capture patient discussions and enter the data into electronic health…
Even if video gaming stocks have not been spared by the massive Tech correction of the last few weeks, it’s worth noting that several Tech giants keep spending big on gaming M&A, in a clear sign of confidence in the industry’s outlook and valuation in a post-pandemic world. Just a few weeks after the completion of…
Since the vaccine news last month, some investors have started questioning the growth sustainability of work-from-home winners, including cybersecurity names, considering that most lockdowns are now behind us and that we are heading towards a full economy reopening in 2021. This week’s earnings and guidance from some of the top software vendors securing the remote…
The newsflow in the gaming industry remains extremely supportive, to say the least. Last week, Nvidia commented that demand for its graphics cards was significantly exceeding supply and Ubisoft announced that its latest Assassin’s Creed title was the biggest first-week seller in the franchise, suggesting that consensus relatively low expectations for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla are…
The roller-coaster ride is set to continue for Beyond Meat, one of our largest Food Revolution positions, with significant disappointment and confusion last night following the company’s Q3 earnings report and McDonald’s announcement of its MacPlant burger (initial perception was that McDonald’s would develop plant-based burgers on its own). Even if we understand the short-term reaction,…
There’s definitely a lot of excitement around liquid biopsies and genomic testing, as illustrated by the acquisition announced today of Thrive Earlier Detection for up to $2.15bn by Exact Sciences. This transaction follows the $8bn purchase of Grail by Illumina a few weeks ago and that of ArcherDx by Invitae for up to $1.4bn in June.…
HelloFresh, the leading German online mealkit provider, just pre-announced impressive figures for Q3 with revenue expected up 120% to around EUR970m (vs. EUR836m initial guidance) and EBITDA expected to rise 7x to around EUR115m (vs. EUR73m initially). The company raised its full-year guidance accordingly, now forecasting 95%-105% revenue growth vs. 75%-95% previously. The read-across is…
Restaurant closures, bankruptcies, reopenings with restrictions… The restaurant industry has had a pretty rough time, to say the least. And things should remain difficult in the foreseeable future as Covid-19 doesn’t seem in a hurry to go away. In spite of this adverse environment, we have been investing in various restaurant software names since day…
In early July, we commented that Livongo was arguably one of the most attractive assets in the Digital Health and Nutrition Tech space and was likely to attract takeover interest. Well, we didn’t have to wait long to see some M&A action as Livongo and leading telemedicine player Teladoc announced their merger today in a…
After more than 20 years covering the Technology and Innovation space, we didn’t think we would one day spend some time researching companies offering lawn and garden products… Here we are, investing in the Scotts Miracle-Gro, a US company that spotted the hydroponic trend at an early stage and became, through its Hawthorne division, the…
The disruption of the global meat supply chain, which started a couple of weeks ago in the US with the Covid-related closure of meat processing facilities, intensified in recent days. Over the weekend, China’s customs suspended imports of poultry products from a Tyson meatpacking facility which was a coronavirus cluster. This move followed the discovery…
While it was already on an upward trajectory, consumption of plant-based meat recorded a major acceleration during the pandemic with Nielsen estimating that sales of fresh meat alternatives in the US were up 240% year-on-year over the March-May period. The disruption in the traditional meat processing industry clearly helped: some of America’s largest processing plants…
Back in April, we commented that a new generation of cloud-native cybersecurity companies (Zscaler, Okta, CrowdStrike…) was likely to disrupt the actual leaders (Check Point, Palo Alto…). Clearly, the accelerated digitization of the economy in the last couple of months helped them deliver on our expectation, with several players reporting impressive earnings last week and…
Last week, highly popular video game Fortnite hosted an in-game virtual concert by rapper Travis Scott. The performance attracted a record 12.3 million players, a number that should be revised upwards when taking into consideration people who watched the concert outside of the game on streaming platforms like Twitch and YouTube. While some could argue…
There’s been a lot of literature in recent days about the “remote” or at-home revolution. Remote working, videoconferencing, telemedicine and online shopping just to name a few are indeed currently supporting millions of people across the world in their daily professional activity, in helping them to stay in contact with colleagues and loved ones and,…
Video gaming has undoubtedly been one of the rare safe havens in the equity market in recent weeks, as illustrated by the performance of our Gaming certificate (down just 3.7% month-to-date). The industry should indeed emerge largely unscathed from the current health crisis as an expected surge in digital revenue, with hundreds of millions of people…
Bucking the market trend, our largest Digital Health position Teladoc reached a new high yesterday. How to fight the spread of novel infectious diseases such as the coronavirus? That’s the question health authorities across the world have had to answer in recent weeks and it appears that new technologies, namely telemedicine and medical robotics, can…
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ISIN
DE000US8FB90
Currency
USD
Type
Active Equity
Issuer / Rating
Kepler – UBS / S&P A+
Inception Date
17.02.2020
Liquidity
Daily