Dan Ives: Mark My Words - "The AI Panic is Fake" (Buy These 5 Stocks Before Next Earnings)

I think it sets the tone for this tech earning season because when you think about what's happened on cloud, call it mid60% growth. This has really been a turnaround for the ages that you've seen in Alpha go back to a year ago. I think it's showing that you're you're seeing the growth. You're seeing the enterprise really start to go after the AI modernization and then of course what they've done on surge what they've really done across the board when it comes to Gemini despite the fact that it was delayed at the cap back. So McKenzie talked about it likely over 300 billion next year that that's something that's now showing more and more monetization. >> When Wall Street digested Alphabet's latest earnings report, panic instantly crept into the retail narrative. The headline trigger, a staggering capital expenditure forecast pushing well past $180 billion annually, sending shock waves through traders spooked by short-term margin compression. But while casual observers saw reckless cash burn, seasoned market participants saw a blowout statement. Q2 revenue surging 24% year-over-year to 119.8 billion alongside Google Cloud accelerating 82% to 24.8 8 billion. Veteran technology analyst Dan Ies, now partner and senior managing director at Yorkville Ives and Company, views this knee-jerk sell-off as a massive fundamental misconception. In his analysis, Alphabet's relentless capex expansion isn't a red flag. It is the definitive proof that tech has transitioned from the speculative AI hype cycle into multi-billion dollar enterprise monetization. As enterprise clients race to modernize their digital architecture, hyperscaler spending serves as the ultimate leading indicator for tech earnings. Crucially, Alphabet's massive infrastructure engine does not operate in a vacuum. Every billion dollars deployed into compute capacity, proprietary silicon, and next generation data centers flows directly into a hypers specialized supply chain. Before mainstream consensus catches on, active investors need to look downstream at the five primary beneficiaries monetizing this capex surge. The undisputed GPU hardware powerhouse, the dominant custom ASIC and networking partner, the indispensable data center cooling and power infrastructure leader, the secondary cloud titan validating enterprise AI adoption, and the global consumer ecosystem giant leveraging these foundational models across billions of edge devices. First on the list is the undisputed engine of this accelerated computing transformation, Nvidia, ticker NVDA. As hyperscalers scale infrastructure spend, Nvidia's financial performance continues to smash records with Q1 revenue reaching an extraordinary 81.6 billion, up 85% year-over-year, and quarterly data center revenue surging 92% to $75.2 billion. While short-term market skeptics debate margin compression and custom ASIC threats, Nvidia is actively disintermediating traditional server architectures through its high performance Vera CPU and GB300 NVL72 rack scale systems which reduce token generation costs by up to 35 times while scaling throughput for multi-agent reasoning workflows. Beyond dominating current cloud data centers, CEO Jensen Hang is executing a visionary strategy targeting emerging zerobion industries. NVIDIA is laying the software and foundational infrastructure for physical AI, industrial robotics, quantum computing, and digital biology, ensuring its CUDA platform powers the next generation of technological breakthroughs. supported by non-GAAP gross margins holding near 75% an expanded $80 billion share repurchase authorization and a structurally expanded total addressable market. Nvidia retains unprecedented pricing power as the foundational backbone of global AI infrastructure. Capitalizing on this massive hardware expansion, our second beneficiary stands as the premier custom silicon and networking partner, Broadcom, ticker AVgo. As tech giants like Alphabet expand capital expenditures, they are increasingly turning to custom applicationspecific integrated circuits or AS6 to lower power costs and optimize specialized AI workloads. Broadcom stands as the custom silicon powerhouse co-designing and manufacturing proprietary hardware like Google's tensor processing units while providing high performance networking architecture to interconnect massive compute clusters. Financial results highlight Broadcom's explosive momentum with Q2 consolidated revenues surging 47.9% year-over-year to 22.19 billion. AI related semiconductor revenue jumped 143% now driving nearly 49% of the company's total consolidated business. Broadcom continues to secure multi-year commitments from major hyperscalers, backed by an expanding AI order backlog well above $73 billion. Equally vital is Broadcom's dominance in high bandwidth networking. As AI models scale into hyperintensive clusters, technologies like their Tomahawk Ethernet switches, Jericho fabric solutions, and co-packaged optics become essential to prevent compute bottlenecks. Backed by a $30 billion multi-year order booking in a single quarter and steady software integration, Broadcom provides unprecedented topline visibility as custom silicon adoption accelerates. Sustaining these dense silicon deployments brings us directly to our third critical beneficiary, Verdive Holdings, ticker VRT. Deploying hundreds of billions of dollars into highdensity compute hardware creates a massive non-negotiable physical challenge. Thermal and electrical management. Modern AI clusters generate unprecedented heat and draw immense power making legacy air cooling obsolete. Verdive steps directly into this gap, supplying the critical liquid cooling systems, uninterruptible power supplies, and power distribution units required to keep modern AI factories operational. Verdives operational transformation has been remarkable. Trailing 12-month revenues have surged past $10.8 billion, backed by a 2-year organic revenue compound annual growth rate of 23.7%. Profitability has expanded dramatically alongside scale with adjusted operating margins reaching 20.8% [music] and fullear net sales growth guided at 34%. The primary growth engine remains Verdives's first mover advantage in highdensity liquid cooling. As hyperscalers roll out high power rack systems, liquid cooling shifts from an alternative solution to the industry standard. Vertive's position is further reinforced by a record-breaking order backlog reaching $15 billion. Strategic acquisitions in thermal engineering ensure Verdiff stays ahead of hyperscaler demands, making its power and cooling infrastructure an indispensable beneficiary as global data center construction accelerates. Validating this massive cloud buildout on the software side, our fourth beneficiary is the software and enterprise cloud titan Microsoft, ticker MSFT. Alphabet's blowout cloud metrics served as a crucial proof point for Microsoft, demonstrating that cloud spending is actively reacelerating as enterprise clients scale up realorld AI adoption. This validation directly alleviates broader market anxiety over whether enterprises are truly monetizing generative AI tools or simply experimenting. Microsoft enters its Q4 earnings report with strong underlying operational momentum with analysts anticipating quarterly revenues near 87.7 billion representing 14.7% year-over-year growth and flagship Azure revenues projected to grow between 39% and 40%. As the foundational architecture for enterprise software, Microsoft is uniquely positioned because it controls the cloud infrastructure, the productivity application layer, and the enterprise data ecosystem where autonomous software agents operate. While quarterly capital expenditures exceeding $40 billion [music] have drawn scrutiny regarding near-term free cash flow, the underlying driver is massive enterprise demand for compute capacity. Growth in seat licenses and usage intensity for platforms like Microsoft C-Pilot provides clear evidence that AI features are becoming permanently integrated into daily enterprise workflow subscriptions, positioning Microsoft for substantial multi-year topline expansion. Finally, standing at the ultimate consumer endpoint of this multi-billion dollar hardware wave, our fifth stock is Apple, ticker APL. While hyperscalers bear the immense burden of massive data center capex, Apple is pursuing a capital efficient strategy, avoiding heavy infrastructure investments altogether and instead licensing best-in-class foundational models to power consumer experiences for billions of global device users. Dan Ies has repeatedly highlighted this strategic alignment where Alphabet's leading Gemini models help power Apple's next generation intelligence and upgraded Siri features. As hyperscalers continuously optimize model efficiency, Apple gains access to low latency costeffective AI engines capable of running seamless ondevice workflows without crushing corporate free cash flow or facing heavy chip depreciation cycles. Instead of burning capital on raw compute infrastructure, Apple leverages its ecosystem like a high margin toll collector. Through the app store, Apple captures 15% to 30% commission revenues from the explosive surge in thirdparty mobile AI app subscriptions. Combined with internal cost discipline driven by transitioning to in-house silicon components, Apple generated over $45 billion in cash reserves while returning tens of billions to shareholders via buybacks, turning hyperscaler capex directly into low-risk shareholder value. As hyperscalers expand compute capacity, these five key stocks capture every stage of the multi-billion dollar AI value chain. Track their quarterly execution closely. Position your portfolio strategically around real enterprise monetization and subscribe for ongoing datadriven market updates.