VenkatP
Physician, Growth & Value Stock Investor
Arista Networks' accelerating revenue and gross profit against relatively flat operating expenses make existing shares hard to sell, and the AI revolution could take them higher down the road. EPS growth is strengthening. After a 20-fold run, P/E expansion from 25 to 58 and P/S from 8 to 22 leave it too expensive to enter now, though the valuation looks justified; the best gains may be over. If growth slows, prolonged consolidation is possible. x.comÂ
AI product, networking, compute and power demand could reward patient owners of Meta, Nokia, Oracle, Broadcom, IREN and Vistra. Meta's Muse could unlock massive revenue; free cash flow could recover when AI spending slows. Nokia works with Nvidia on AI-RAN and 6G. Oracle has $664B in obligations and massive potential reward from OpenAI. Broadcom's AI chip revenue rose 221% to $16.7B; IREN has a $9.7B Microsoft contract and 5 GW of power. AI power bottlenecks favor Vistra. x.com x.com x.com x.com … Show more
Arista is losing share in a record market, a bad combination. Evercore's Q2 Ethernet front-end tracker shows the market at a record $7.3B, up 34% year over year, with cloud up 54% and neoclouds up 208%, yet Arista lost 145bps of front-end share. The tracker doesn't show who gained, though IDC ranked Nvidia's own Ethernet business first in data-center switching revenue in Q1, on a different vendor cut. x.comÂ
Microsoft's 50% Azure growth and prospect of positive cash flow in 2027 make the stock look bulletproof. Headcount cuts, lower Anthropic spend, a better Copilot routed to cheaper tokens, and coming proprietary chips and model usage add to the case. It should get Apple's multiple plus recognition for cybersecurity. x.com x.comÂ
AI infrastructure may have room to run because model-company ARR growth leaves room to fund compute commitments. Anthropic and OpenAI added $36b of ARR in Q3; even after Anthropic's slowdown, modeled $35b quarterly additions leave room to meet those commitments. Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Oracle's backlog rose 97% year over year (Oracle estimated before reporting), and combined Q3 revenue grew 55%. Softer backlog matters less when new orders and expansions drive much forward growth. x.com … Show more
Arista Networks is expensive against its earnings at about 69 times trailing and 41 times next year's, while the industry usually gets 18 times. Eighteen times next year's estimated $4.84 per share, give or take 12%, puts fair value at about $76.62-$97.52, so the $199.42 price sits 105% above the high end, and the forward read already leans on a forecast 66% above trailing earnings. This is a levels-only screen with no fundamental work. x.comÂ
Microsoft's salesforce and governed platform unlock AI spending at conservative firms. Faster enterprise than consumer AI adoption makes it effectively the only pure play. M365 Commercial may top 20% growth next quarter, sooner than expected on tonight's guide; GitHub resegmentation helps, but it should do so this year anyway. Azure and M365, two-thirds of revenue, should grow above 50% and 20% and may accelerate. $24-25 CY27 EPS remains achievable, implying under 22x forward earnings. x.com … Show more
Arista Networks continues to execute at an elite level, with revenue growth above 30%, operating margins above 42% and accelerating EPS, the profile of a high-quality compounder. x.comÂ
Rapid revenue growth makes the capex bear case harder to justify for Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Amazon. Their latest cited growth rates are 18%, 23%, 28% and 16% in Q2, respectively; their scale does not seem to be slowing them as expected. x.comÂ
Microsoft's AI spending is producing faster growth with better economics: Azure accelerated to 48% on a $100B+ base while capex was $39.4B, below expectations. Management then guided Azure to 49-50% and said demand still exceeds supply, ending the debate over whether AI investment is paying off. Overweight, $625 target. x.com x.com x.comÂ