When Saudi Arabia unveiled plans in 2023 for a new airline that could take on regional champions Emirates and Qatar Airways , the aviation industry was back in full swing after the pandemic, with packed planes driving fares higher and lifting profits to a record. What followed for Riyadh Air was a race to build an operation from scratch, from ordering aircraft to designing sleek purple uniforms to...
When Saudi Arabia unveiled plans in 2023 for a new airline that could take on regional champions Emirates and Qatar Airways , the aviation industry was back in full swing after the pandemic, with packed planes driving fares higher and lifting profits to a record. What followed for Riyadh Air was a race to build an operation from scratch, from ordering aircraft to designing sleek purple uniforms to training hundreds of pilots and cabin crew. Invariably, not everything went smoothly. Plane deliveries, in particular, got pushed back several times because of certification issues, forcing the airline to delay its launch, now slated for sometime this year. As a result, Riyadh Air now finds itself in the difficult position of having to start commercial operations at a time when the war in Iran has thrown the aviation industry off balance, and nowhere more so than in the Middle East. Emirates, Qatar and Etihad Airways have had to cancel tens of thousands of flights, rework their entire route network, and accommodate to lower demand amid constant disruptions. The Saudi carrier was initially supposed to start taking delivery of the Boeing Co. 787 jets in 2025. But more than a year later, only a about a handful of the widebody aircraft have been assembled and are still awaiting certification from the US Federal Aviation Administration. That final approval from the FAA has dragged on several months longer than previously expected, according to people familiar with the matter. The agency has not provided a fresh timeline for the process or informed Riyadh Air of when it might be able to operate those planes, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the discussions are confidential. The airline said “there has been significant technical work accomplished to ensure readiness of our aircraft and seven planes are currently fully built and are at the final stages of certification.” “Riyadh Air has full confidence in the imminent arrival of these aircraft, enabling the start...
Maria Saifutdinova/iStock via Getty Images Introduction Micron Technology, Inc. ( MU ) today stands at a $720 billion market cap, trading at a measly 11x forward P/E ratio and a 0.07x PEG ratio. This is unheard of for a company showing over 190% year-over-year revenue growth and a 57% net income margin in their latest earnings release. In my last article on MU, I discussed how structural demand is...
Maria Saifutdinova/iStock via Getty Images Introduction Micron Technology, Inc. ( MU ) today stands at a $720 billion market cap, trading at a measly 11x forward P/E ratio and a 0.07x PEG ratio. This is unheard of for a company showing over 190% year-over-year revenue growth and a 57% net income margin in their latest earnings release. In my last article on MU, I discussed how structural demand is replacing cyclical volatility. Since writing this article, MU has gone up over 60%. My thesis hinged on a rerating driven by the demand driver shifting from consumer products to AI infrastructure – HBM stacks are qualified per generation of GPU with memory requirements increasing per generation & NVIDIA Corporation’s ( NVDA ) GPU release cadence is now annual, significantly decreasing cyclicality in this line of business. While the market initially focused on the explosive demand for GPUs and HBM for training foundational models, the focus has now shifted toward the orchestration and inference layers, where CPUs dominate. With the Vera Rubin platform now entering high-volume production, MU is set to be a large supplier for Vera CPUs. The combination of an incredible margin profile, a fully committed 2026 HBM capacity, and growth driven by SOCAMM2 and HBM4 creates a path to $1,500 and beyond, and so I reiterate my Strong Buy rating on MU. Market Backdrop Seeking Alpha Intel Corporation ( INTC ), once considered a laggard in the AI race, is now up over 457% in the last year and 201% on a YTD basis. This rally was driven by the realization that as AI workloads evolve from foundational training to agentic inference, the burden of orchestration and complex logic handling returns to the CPU. During the initial AI boom, GPUs were the primary beneficiaries of CapEx, as hyperscalers raced to build massive training clusters. However, the nature of AI usage is shifting toward inference: the act of running a trained model to generate responses or perform actions. Unlike training, whic...
Maria Saifutdinova/iStock via Getty Images Introduction Micron Technology, Inc. ( MU ) today stands at a $720 billion market cap, trading at a measly 11x forward P/E ratio and a 0.07x PEG ratio. This is unheard of for a company showing over 190% year-over-year revenue growth and a 57% net income margin in their latest earnings release. In my last article on MU, I discussed how structural demand is...
Maria Saifutdinova/iStock via Getty Images Introduction Micron Technology, Inc. ( MU ) today stands at a $720 billion market cap, trading at a measly 11x forward P/E ratio and a 0.07x PEG ratio. This is unheard of for a company showing over 190% year-over-year revenue growth and a 57% net income margin in their latest earnings release. In my last article on MU, I discussed how structural demand is replacing cyclical volatility. Since writing this article, MU has gone up over 60%. My thesis hinged on a rerating driven by the demand driver shifting from consumer products to AI infrastructure – HBM stacks are qualified per generation of GPU with memory requirements increasing per generation & NVIDIA Corporation’s ( NVDA ) GPU release cadence is now annual, significantly decreasing cyclicality in this line of business. While the market initially focused on the explosive demand for GPUs and HBM for training foundational models, the focus has now shifted toward the orchestration and inference layers, where CPUs dominate. With the Vera Rubin platform now entering high-volume production, MU is set to be a large supplier for Vera CPUs. The combination of an incredible margin profile, a fully committed 2026 HBM capacity, and growth driven by SOCAMM2 and HBM4 creates a path to $1,500 and beyond, and so I reiterate my Strong Buy rating on MU. Market Backdrop Seeking Alpha Intel Corporation ( INTC ), once considered a laggard in the AI race, is now up over 457% in the last year and 201% on a YTD basis. This rally was driven by the realization that as AI workloads evolve from foundational training to agentic inference, the burden of orchestration and complex logic handling returns to the CPU. During the initial AI boom, GPUs were the primary beneficiaries of CapEx, as hyperscalers raced to build massive training clusters. However, the nature of AI usage is shifting toward inference: the act of running a trained model to generate responses or perform actions. Unlike training, whic...
Ashi Sae Yang/iStock via Getty Images Market review and outlook The world financial markets, after performing well in the first two months of the year on continued optimism about trends in economic growth and interest rates, turned lower following the start of the conflict in the Middle East in Iran in early March. The ensuing spike in oil prices, together with concerns about possible shortages of...
Ashi Sae Yang/iStock via Getty Images Market review and outlook The world financial markets, after performing well in the first two months of the year on continued optimism about trends in economic growth and interest rates, turned lower following the start of the conflict in the Middle East in Iran in early March. The ensuing spike in oil prices, together with concerns about possible shortages of other commodities caused by disrupted supply chains, dampened the growth outlook and led to a sharp rise in inflation expectations. The deteriorating inflation picture, in turn, dashed optimism that central banks could continue cutting rates. In combination, these developments led to a surge in global government bond yields that erased the positive total returns achieved in the first two months of the year. The conflict also fueled a sizable downturn in major global equity indexes in March, sending stocks into the red. With this said, the majority of the negative return for equities stemmed from weakness in the growth style in general, and mega-cap U.S. technology stocks in particular. Conversely, the value style, dividend payers, and more defensive companies generally produced positive returns, benefiting diversified investors. We're encouraged by the broadening of leadership away from the "Magnificent Seven" group of U.S. tech companies, as it provided a tailwind for our diversified positioning. Contributors and detractors Underlying manager performance was the primary contributor to relative performance in the quarter, highlighted by relative strength in international equities. The effect of allocation was roughly neutral. On the positive side, we benefited from having an overweight in U.S. mid-cap stocks and developed-market international equities relative to U.S. large caps. An underweight in emerging-markets stocks further contributed. However, an overweight in stocks versus bonds hurt results. Portfolio changes The broader investment picture was very much in flux at...