mon
Independent Analyst, High-Risk Small-Cap & Growth Investing
Hardware is the new software as clients redirect capex toward supply-constrained servers, storage and memory, benefiting Dell and SanDisk. IBM fell 25% after saying clients shifted late-June capex toward those purchases ahead of expected price increases, a reprioritization bigger than it anticipated. x.comÂ
Hardware is the new software, as the AI boom shifts premium valuations from asset-light software to physical compute. Every hyperscaler and enterprise is in a hardware arms race for servers, storage, networking and chips, so Dell and SanDisk are printing. Hardware has run up nearly 5x from its 2023 baseline while software pulled back, signaling a decade in which hardware earns the premium software enjoyed in the 2010s. Buy hardware, sell software. x.com x.comÂ
AI storage names are getting a demand pull-forward as customers rush to lock in supply-constrained hardware before price increases. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said that in the last weeks of June clients shifted capex toward servers, storage and memory ahead of expected price hikes, a reprioritization bigger than IBM anticipated. That is a constructive read-through for Pure Storage, NetApp, Seagate, Western Digital and Dell. x.comÂ
Hardware is squeezing software as enterprises redirect budgets to scarce servers, GPUs and storage, favoring semiconductors over software. IBM's Q2 revenue of $17.2B missed its $17.9B target, and its CEO said clients moved software and IT consulting budgets to secure rising-priced hardware. Microsoft, ServiceNow and Salesforce face near-term pressure while Dell and Micron benefit. Aehr Test's beat and raised guidance counter claims the chip cycle is dead. x.comÂ
Hardware vendors like HPE, HP and Logitech are now challenged as Micron locks more DRAM volume into strategic customer agreements rather than spot, since enterprises have less reason to pull in purchases when pricing is more certain. Supply-chain complexity winners like Dell are probably less advantaged too. The shift favors semicap names like Applied Materials and ASML if growth comes from bits rather than price, earns Micron a higher multiple for trading price for duration, and aids buyers. … Show more
IBM's second-quarter miss looks like a timing issue rather than AI taking over software, with valuation offering support. Shares fell after management cited clients shifting capex to memory and hardware amid supply constraints and price hikes, plus poor execution on closing deals. It is a rare miss for CEO Arvind Krishna. The stock could be dead money for a while. x.comÂ
IBM is one of the strangest and most expensive companies today because its re-rating rests on a software transition its numbers don't show. Bulls say IBM is becoming a software company, yet deferred revenue was lower as a share of total assets in FY25 than in FY16. x.comÂ
Dell and HPE are priced on an AI-server story rather than their businesses. Like HP Inc., which just posted weak results on rising memory costs and thinner PC margins, they are cyclical hardware companies dependent on enterprise capex, yet their shares diverged only because of the AI-server label. Data center demand is real, but the premium has run far ahead of it. Such pricing can last long in a liquid, risk-on market, as in 1999 and 2021, so a drop is not imminent. x.comÂ
Deployment limits will slow AI hardware spending and expose cyclical suppliers such as SK hynix. Amazon has hardware waiting for power, and Broadcom's CEO said some clients delayed shipments because they could not deploy. Cheap forward multiples can mark a cyclical peak as analysts extrapolate growth. The slowdown could have begun or be a year away; timing is uncertain, so reducing cyclical risk in favor of healthier, genuinely cheap names looks better. x.com x.com x.comÂ
AI security rules could shift frontier inference into monitored data centers, lifting demand for AMD and Nvidia chips and Micron and SanDisk memory. Agents attacked 400+ banks; US labs cut off abusive users, unlike downloaded open weights. Licensing is a forecast, and these four look undervalued at today's closes. Meta lists $356B in future leases and $455B in other commitments, mostly cloud capacity such as CoreWeave and Nebius plus equipment; those recipients are being sold off. x.com x.comÂ
Sandisk, Western Digital and Seagate are priced as if AI's borrowed demand is permanent. Server spending is growing 36.9% in 2026 and data center systems 31.7%, versus 10.8% for total IT, a gap funded by raided budgets, panic orders and record debt; data center debt issuance nearly doubled last year to $182 billion. Since April, P/S rose from 10.5x to 25.5x at Sandisk, 8.6x to 18.7x at Western Digital and 8.5x to 19.7x at Seagate. Stocks bought above 10x sales have historically lost money. x.comÂ
IBM's record one-day drop, on pace to surpass its 1987 Black Monday decline, is the biggest overreaction since Netflix's near-40% plunge in 2022. IBM's CEO said only a few large capex deals in mainframe and its associated software were paused near quarter-end, not a widespread problem, and that IBM does not see its software being disrupted by AI at all. x.com x.comÂ
