Serenity: Investors are indiscriminately selling off assets in the AI industry chain, with some storage stocks' valuations dropping to an annualized price-to-earnings ratio of 1.6 times

Investor Serenity (@aleabitoreddit) posted that the current market deleveraging has become quite severe, with investors indiscriminately selling stocks related to the AI industry chain. Some companies' stock prices have even fallen back to levels before significant orders and performance expectations were realized.

Serenity cited the storage chip company ESMT as an example, noting that the company has a market capitalization of about $2 billion, achieving a gross profit of $526.2 million and a net profit of $330 million in the third quarter, with net assets of approximately $937 million, of which net cash is about $740 million. Based on current performance annualized, its price-to-earnings ratio is only about 1.6 times. Despite ongoing market concerns about the cycle peaking, unsustainable profits, and lack of competitive barriers, the trend of DDR2 and DDR3 production lines exiting is tightening supply, and ESMT expects to hedge against declining consumer demand in the fourth quarter by raising product average prices.

Serenity also pointed out that manufacturers like Samsung and Micron are gradually exiting DDR2 and DDR3 production lines, and Nanya Technology has also stopped related production lines, while ESMT's revenue mainly comes from these two types of storage products. It believes that the market underestimates the price support brought by the contraction of traditional storage supply and ignores the situation where Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix, and SanDisk are locking in profitability through long-term supply agreements and price floors. Serenity criticized that the market is selling off AI and storage industry chain companies that actually generate substantial cash flow while shifting funds to companies like Walmart, which has a price-to-earnings ratio of about 47 times, and CrowdStrike, which has a forward price-to-earnings ratio of about 180 times. The current focus is not on the actual free cash flow generated by companies but rather on indiscriminate selling.