The Few Bets That Matter
Concentrated Equity Investor, AI Infrastructure
SolarEdge and Enphase are both best positioned for solid-state transformers, and both are mid-term accumulation candidates, with no preference yet between them. Per a post the author replies to, Enphase uses Infineon's GaN bidirectional switches for its SST. Their charts suggest the monster move can continue. x.com x.comÂ
Enphase and SolarEdge, dead home-solar stocks, have a credible path through a pivot to solid-state transformers, which @tailrisked calls the future of grid technology. It remains a very speculative play warranting only small positions. x.comÂ
Enphase's US home-solar demand still has not stabilized, delaying its potential home-power recovery to 2027. Q4 revenue guidance of $225-255M is about 20% below the Street at the midpoint, and guided gross margin falls to 40-43% from 45%. Higher electricity costs from AI demand could eventually favor homes generating and storing power; its IQ Battery 5G stores about 50% more energy and costs about 40% less to make. The next two quarters look tough. x.com x.comÂ
Enphase is one of the most asymmetric opportunities in the market because the US is banning Chinese solar inverters and Enphase is one of the largest US inverter makers. Its new data center product also has 20+ customers lined up. A 15% drop from the morning's highs after the ban news looks like free money. x.com x.comÂ
Solar stocks are starting to come back to life, with Enphase, Nextracker, First Solar and SolarEdge in Stage 2 uptrends showing heavy accumulation. They also carry high short interest, and the midterms are approaching. x.comÂ
Enphase is still a business in contraction: Q2's sequential improvement came almost entirely from safe-harbor shipments booked ahead of tax-credit deadlines, not returning end demand. Those deals pull volume forward, and a tariff refund after the Supreme Court voided IEEPA tariffs flattered GAAP results one time. US revenue, the large majority, is still shrinking. The IQ Solid-State Transformer is an interesting second act, but one clean demand-driven quarter is needed first. x.comÂ
Solar is worth being heavily long through Enphase Energy and T1 Energy as it takes a larger share of US power. Per a quoted post, solar generated more US electricity than coal for the first time in May, 12.8% versus 12.2%, and solar plus storage made up 91% of new US power capacity added in Q1. x.comÂ
Solar equities stand to benefit as solar generation accelerates rapidly across Texas's ERCOT grid, becoming one of the state's fastest-growing electricity sources. The largest beneficiaries span the sector: NextPower's utility-scale trackers, First Solar's US-made thin-film modules, T1 Energy's domestic modules, Enphase's microinverters and storage, SolarEdge's inverters, Sunrun's residential solar, and HA Sustainable Infrastructure Capital's clean-energy financing. x.comÂ
Enphase Energy's declining revenue and EPS make the stock's hype unwarranted. If it cannot perform during the most severe energy shortage in decades, it is hard to see when it will. x.comÂ
SolarEdge could re-rate from a broken solar story to an emerging AI data-center infrastructure play sooner than expected. It set a $600M solid-state transformer revenue target for 2029, far above a ~$250M base case for 2030, and its 800 VDC conversion stage is running under load in the lab, keeping a working system on track for end-2026. A joint white paper with NVIDIA adds credibility, though NVIDIA does not endorse it and there is no pilot customer or order yet. It is a 2027-2028 play. x.com … Show more