Autos, Industrials, Smartphone and PCs Semis in 2025, a health check

Bible 3Q24 - Smartphones: Sluggish demand; 5G cycle resumes; iPhone missed & we see further downside.

Demand is sluggish, with the 2024 and 2025 outlooks implying slight unit growth after 2022 & 2023 down 13% & 4% respectively. With saturation and elongating replacement cycles, we see that as a best case. The December quarter iPhone guide missed consensus expectations, and we expect further downside. Replacement cycles are elongating, share gains in China have stalled, and recent datapoints support our view (Apple lowering iPhone 16 production plans). Semi revenues are back to secular growth, driven by content. This is in expectations.

Wolfspeed: are margins in materials collapsing, or about to collapse?

Wolfspeed’s gross margin declined 16pts year-on-year in its most recent quarter. We analyze potential moving parts in today’s one slider

OpenAI: o3 is a game changer - a few steps away from AG. After the $1bn-to-train model, the $1m-inference model.

o3, only a few steps away from AGI, is a game changer for AI adoption, monetization, and infrastructure. After the $1bn-to-train model, here is the $1m-inference model.

Airtel Africa (Buy, TP: GBp200, +85%) Second share buyback program

Airtel Africa has announced a second share buyback program of up to $100m, with the first $50m tranche starting today until the 24th of April 2025. This is positive news and as we wrote HERE reflects the strength of execution of AAF

Takeaways from our conversation with VerticalScope (FORA-TO, Not rated)

Yesterday we hosted the latest in our Digital Ad Exec Speaker Series with Chris Goodridge, President and COO of VerticalScope, (FORA-TO, Not rated), which operates 1,200+ online enthusiast communities with 100M+ monthly users (70% of which are in the US), generating $60M+ of digital ad revenue annually.