Everyone is looking for reasons to buy a company. And they are easy to find.

But what is even more important: why you should NOT buy a company.

Often, after doing hours of research on a company, I stumble on a major red flag.

And then I have to let it go. That sucks. Time wasted.

While taking a shower (because that’s when I have my brightest thoughts, who doesn’t?), I figured I had to change things up.

I have to look for red flags, BEFORE I start doing my research.

So I’ve spend hours on building the perfect AI prompt to assist me with this.

It has saved me tons of time already. And it can save you hours of time as well.

The prompt I use is a filter. And it’s a good one at it.

Does the company not pas this filter?

Goodbye. I move on.

I have tested this on multiple companies already and here are some red flags it spotted.

For Amplitech Group:

For Droneshield

Is the company stable with a good track record, for example Novo Nordisk?

Then you get a green light.

But, it still flags things to check out before you dive deep. That’s where you start.

So before we get to the prompt, I want to make one thing clear.

This prompt is to help you spot the red flags.

Once the prompt finds them, it’s up to you to factcheck them and dig deeper.

This is a helper. Not a replacement of your own critical thinking.

Below you can find the prompt and how I use it. It is also added to my investment Library, one of the main perks for my paid subscribers.

In this Library I provide insight into my portfolio, buys/sells, valuation models, several watchlists and AI prompts to use for research.

More info here:

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Even though my portfolio consists 90% of long-term holdings and I don’t make a lot of moves, I am watching the market like a hawk. Everyday.

I have a large watchlist of stocks that I track. And I like to stay on top of things.

My goal is to let all of you know when I think some these stocks reach interesting buying levels.

This article is my top 15 list of stocks I think are interesting now.

All of them are at attractive valuations and all of them long-term holds. These are NOT swing-plays or stocks that I think wil 10X. I know claiming that sells subs, but I’m not an investor like that.

My focus is on quality, cashflows and profitable sustainable business models.

Before we get in, a short side-note. I have a google drive for paid subscribers in which I share my sentiment (what I think of valuation) regarding stocks in my portfolio and I’ve build several thematic watchlists.

If you are interested, more information can be found here:

Let’s start with the honorable mentions that didn’t make the list, but still look nice from here.

• Meta

• KKR & Co. Inc

• Builders Firstsource

• Vistra Corp

• S&P Global

• Visa

All of these fit my criteria, but haven’t made it to the list for now. But they definitely deserve a spot on your watchlist.

15. Netflix

First one is Netflix. A company I like because it has an easy to to understand business model and a product everyone and their grandma knows and can understand. The sentiment around Netflix changes faster than their film and series offering.

Three years ago, everyone believed the growth was over and it traded at $20. Then it surged 500% in two years.

Right now, shares trade around $81 after peaking at $130 last year, that’s means it’s now in a 40% drawdown. The forward PE also saw a sharp decrease, and you can now buy Netflix at a forward PE of 24 instead of the quite expensive 50 we saw last year.

This means you are basically paying a market multiple for a business that still has strong pricing power, a scaling ad tier and the best engagement data in the streaming world.

The ad tier is what’s gonna have to provide the growth the next years. They rake in a lot of new subscribers and open them up to being a new high-margin revenue stream. When it comes to pricing power, Netflix is in a league of it’s own. Netflix is so embedded in households, it’s probably the last subscription that’s being canceled (although I personally could care less).

Keep in mind however, that the subscriber growth is maturing (slowing down), so the leg up would depend more on ads and live content delivering on it’s promise. It’s also very expensive to continue creating new content, if they release a few costly names that perform bad, it could totally switch the sentiment.

14. Novo Nordisk

Novo Nordisk, a hate it or love it stock. Mostly hated now. That’s because the market is pricing Novo as a permanent loser. For now, that narrative makes sense. Novo is guiding for negative growth in 2026, so it totally deserves that lower multiple right now.

The thesis is simple: Novo will return back to growth. At least, that’s what you’re aiming for if you invest. The key driver to realize this growth iss the launch of the Wegovy pill, which should capture a good chunk of the oral GLP-1 space. I believe the success it’s having now is not fully priced in into Novo’s guidance. T

Last quarter seemed like a sentiment shift started as Q1 beat expectations and management raised it’s full-year guidance. However, right now it seems Lilly keeps winning head-to-head, and guidance still points to sales and profit declining 4-12% this year. So we are certainly not there yet.

Novo trades at a forward PE of 13, which would look absolutely stupid if the Wegovy pill actually takes off. If we get back to growth there is a lot of room for multiple expansion as this is still a very high-margin business with a lot of potential.

It will take time for the stock and business to recover, but if you’re in it for the long run I think Novo provides an excellent risk/reward setup from this level.

13. Adyen

Since I’m from the Netherlands, this is a stock I see people talk about a lot. Adyen is getting absolutely hammered lately, down 50% in the last year, now trading just above €800.

It trades at a forward multiple of 20x, which is the cheapest it has been since it’s IPO.

The main reason for the multiple contraction is the slowdown in growth.

On top of the slowdown they also missed on expectations in the past few quarters. Another reason is the stagnation in margins. Expectations were that margins would increase, but now they are under pressure due to investments into AI, personnel and new products.

But, this is not a bad business. Revenue still growing at 20%. Processed volume hit €382 billion, up 21%. They have 52% EBITDA margins, no debt, and a take-rate model tied to global digital payment volumes.

But most importantly, management is doing what they said they would. Adyen reaffirmed its full-year 2026 guidance: 20-22% net revenue growth with EBITDA margins targeting above 55% by 2028.

This could be a strong steady compounder to buy for the long-term, if you believe that management can live up to their goals.

12. Xiaomi

Nobody talks about Xiaomi, and that’s a shame. Why Xiaomi? Well first of all, I really like their products. They are super innovative and their product range is huge. From cars to phones, you name it. Most people think it’s still just a phone company, but it hasn’t been like that for a while now.

This wide product range does not make for a good investment per se, but it’s a start.

The share price has fallen 55% from the high from last year. The average analyst price target is HKD 41, implying roughly 56% upside. But as always, take these targets with a grain of salt. They follow stock price.

I think Xiaomi is falling alongside the other Chinese tech stocks that run up last year. A bit of consolidation is not a bad thing.

Xiaomi is a well diversified business. Xiaomi’s EV, AI, and new initiatives division posted its first operating profit in Q3 2025, with EV revenue tripling. They went from zero to profitable in under 18 months. Xiaomi delivered 410,000 vehicles in 2025 and is targeting 550,000 in 2026.

The smartphone division is huge and strong as well. Xiaomi maintained 11.3% global smartphone market share for 23 consecutive quarters, and has been in the top 3 globally for a while now.

But it’s not all roses and sunshine. Q1 2026 was genuinely bad: revenue fell 11% YoY, the first quarterly decline in nearly three years. Smartphone shipments dropped nearly 20% and the EV business showed a loss.

The near-term picture doesn’t look fantastic, but if you’re willing to look further ahead, now might be the time.

The bull case isn’t about Q2. Maybe it’s not even about Q3 and Q4. The bullcase is that you’re buying a multi-segment ecosystem business at a multi-year low valuation. Mostly down because of a ‘‘cyclical memory cost spike’’ and a product transition quarter.

If you believe they can recover, now is the time to start building that position. Personally I believe they can, but it is one of the more risky plays in this list.

But I like the risk/reward from here.

11. Alibaba

Investing in China is not for everyone, so I don’t think everyone will appreciate this pick. But I never rule out a country. If the valuation is attractive, and the tailwinds are there, I will still have a look. There is value everywhere.

Alibaba is now in a 40% correction, after touching $190 last year. Now it trades at $112. Sentiment completely shifted from one of the best positioned Chinese stocks to an E-commerce laggart.

With Alibaba you get a strong balance sheet, AI tailwinds through Qwen and overall the business is progressing steadily. Cloud and AI are accelerating fast, but the E-commerce business is still sluggish. And unfortunately that’s still a large part of the business. Keep in mind though, that within China, Alibaba Cloud is the unambiguous leader.

Investing in Alibaba is looking beyond the E-commerce side of things. In Q4 FY2026, Cloud Intelligence Group revenue jumped 38% YoY to $6B. AI-related products now make up 30% of all cloud segment revenue. That is the growth engine.

CEO Eddie Wu stated that AI revenue could cross 50% of cloud segment revenue within the next 12 months. When the market catches up, it might actually start trading more like an AI company.

They have a cloud segment growing at 38-40% with an AI subset growing at triple digits. There is still so much potential.

BABA currently trades at roughly 18x forward earnings, which is not super cheap but certainly not expensive either.

The reason why it’s down now: Pentagon recently blacklisted a bunch of Chinese companies, Baba included. This pressures institutional holders and tightens US chip export controls that threaten its AI buildout. So this one is not just a business bet, but also geopolitical. Also, there’s always the CCP that could spell trouble and the China discount will not go away anytime soon.

Below $120, I like it.

The next part is for paid subscribers only.

Paid subscribers get access to: all my buys/sells, all of my portfolio updates, access to the private section of my discord, exclusive content, my investment library and my full access to all deep dives and articles.

The last 10 names consist of:

• A fast-growing defense company in a downturn

• 2 unloved Latin-America plays

• 3 AI buildout stocks

• My three favorite SaaS companies right now

• A Payment processer in a downturn

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Some of you might know that I’ve been been a Novo Nordisk shareholder for quite a while now. During that period I’ve done my fair share of research into Eli Lilly, but to be honest, I never really went deep.

To understand the overall GLP-1 landscape, but also to get a good grasp of how Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly really compete (and sometimes compliment each other), it was time to do a proper research piece on Eli Lilly.

In this deep dive I aim to tell you everything you need to know about Eli Lilly. I will also incorporate my knowledge on Novo Nordisk in this analysis, as I think to fully comprehend Eli Lilly, you have to understand Novo Nordisk as well. That works both ways of course.

I did not do this research to confirm my Novo thesis. If anything, I did it to stress-test it. But, I also wanted to find out if maybe Lilly is the better play. Maybe owning both is the way. We are gonna find out!

So, this is what you can expect in this deep dive:

• Full company review; history, management, business model

• A look into Lilly’s strength/weakness/risks/opportunities

• Deep look into the GLP-1 market + relevant drugs from the main players

• Review of Eli Lilly’s financials

• Elaborate valuation analysis

• My overall approach to benefiting from the GLP-1 rush.

What this is not: a deep dive into all the trial results and in-depth comparison of all the different drugs. I will go reasonably deep on the science because it's load-bearing for the thesis, but this is not a trial deep dive. The overall focus will be on the business side of things.

The core assumptions I want to stress-test in this thesis are the following:

• Lilly has the better molecule and is out-executing Novo.

• The durable edge is Tirzepatide + Retatrutide, US-manufacturing and (pipeline) diversification.

• The key deciding factor for the next decade will be who will win the oral race, in which Lilly is currently behind.”

Now, lets go to it and dive in!

If you want to receive more deep dives like this, make sure to subscribe! Also, if you finish reading it, and thought it was valuable, please give it a like and share it so other people can see it as well!

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2. Eli Lilly Origin Story

2.1 How it started

Eli Lilly is the most valuable pharmaceutical company in the world right now. Currently ranking as the 14th largest company, with just over $1T market cap.

Eli Lilly is not a new company, far from it. It was founded in 1876, by who else then the great Colonel Eli Lilly. He was born in 1838 and he was a pharmaceutical chemist by trade.

On May 10, 1876, when he was 38 years old, Eli Lilly opened his own pharmaceutical laboratory in Indianapolis, Indiana. This was not his first try to built a career. After serving in the military at a young age, he tried to get several businesses going, but none of them really succeeded.

But this one did.

Originally, the company began with just three employees, one of them being his own 14-year-old son.

One of the first major innovations and breakthroughs was the gelatin-coating of pills and capsules, which made them easier to swallow. By the end of its first year, the Eli Lilly company had generated a whopping $4,470 in sales. Might sound bad, but that’s actually about $140K in purchasing power today.

Eli Lilly grew steadily in the late 19th century, but the transition from being a regional player to a global player occurred only in 1923. Because that’s when Eli Lilly partnered with researchers from the University of Toronto to mass-produce Iletin, which was the world’s first commercially available insulin.

In the 1940s, Lilly was one of the first companies to develop a method for the mass production of penicillin, which was one of the most frequently used drugs during WWII. The success of penicillin gave them a nice little boost.

The Biotech Era is when things really started moving.

2.2. The Biotech Era

In the late 20th century Lilly moved into the Biotech space, which lead to some of the most famous brand names in the history of medicine. Two names you’ve almost definitely heard heard of:

• Humulin: This was “human” insulin, replacing the older animal-sourced versions.

• Prozac: Lilly launched Prozac, the first SSRI antidepressant. It revolutionized mental health treatment, became a cultural icon, and was the company’s first “blockbuster” drug which earned them over $1B annually.

They also launched less less famous products like Zyprexa, for schizophrenia and Humalog which is a fast-acting insulin.

2.3. The Diabetes and Obesity Era

The obesity era. This is when the real magic starts to happen. It was the discovery of Tirzepatide that changed everything.

The first Tirzepatide drug that was launch was Mounjaro (in 2022) for type 2 diabetes. Later it was also launched as Zepbound (in 2023), specifically for weight loss/management.

These two drugs were real gamechangers, as they were very strong competitors to Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy. Not just competing, but actually outcompeting. The rise was meteoric, wel’ll see some charts later, and led to over a 400% market cap increase in just the past 5 years.

We will dive into the nitty gritty surrounding the specific drugs and pipeline later in this Deep dive.

But for now all you have to know is: Eli Lilly’s drugs are widely considered to be best-in-class for obesity (and diabetes). Zepbound and Mounjaro are eating Novo’s lunch.

3. Company overview

3.1 Overview

Eli Lilly is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana and they currently have around 50,000 employees. Most of these employees are based in North America, about 35,000 of them. The core focus of Eli Lilly is on:

• Metabolic diseases (diabetes/obesity)

• Oncology

• Immunology

• Neuroscience (specifically Alzheimer’s)

3.2 Ownership structure

Eli Lilly’s ownership structure is quite unique, but that’s mostly because of it’s size. About 80% of shares are held by institutional investors like Vanguard and Blackrock.

Another 10% is owned by the Lilly Endowment fund, which is a charitable foundation created by the Lilly family.

The last part of the puzzle is for retail investors and insiders.

The CEO and chairman David Ricks holds about 815,474k shares, worth close to $917M. This includes 106,693 shares that are owned by a family foundation for which he is a director.

4. Management

A very important aspect for me when looking into a company is the management. As you can imagine, Lilly’s management team is very experienced and all of them have been with the company for quite a while already.

The CEO, David Ricks has been with the company for 30 years now, and most of the management team has been around for at least 20 years.

Lilly historically promotes from within, preferring to create a management team around people drenched in the Lilly DNA, rather than looking for external candidates.

4.1 CEO - David A Ricks

The CEO, Dave Ricks, has been with Lilly for a long time, now closing in on 30 years with the company. David became CEO in January 2017 and was elected chair of the company’s board of directors effective June 2017. Before that he worked in marketing, sales, drug development and international operations.

He had made name for himself when he led Lilly’s growth in China and Canada. I would argue he is not afraid to take risks. He doesn’t shy away from making big decisions and really shifting into next gear when he sees an opportunity. He’s proven that multiple times throughout his career.

He famously pushed to cut drug development timelines in half, especially during the scale-up of Mounjaro and Zepbound. That was really big for the sector, but also for the speed at which Lilly was able to rise as fast as they did.

If you want to get a good feel for David as a person, and how he approaches running and building a business, I’d highly recommend the podcast below. It’s a quite open and transparent interview.

David Ricks - In good Company Podcast

I noticed he’s a CEO that’s quite heavily invested in creating a specific type of corporate culture.

The first thing he often mentions is that he wasn’t to spark and encourage curiosity.

Secondly, he wants to create a sort of family-like culture. I know that’s something that a lot of companies want to achieve, but the way he describes it resonates with me.

The overall culture seems very cordial and respectful. He even mentions people call it ‘‘Lilly Nice’’.

He also mentioned during other interviews that he prefers a culture of debate, a place where everyone in the leadership-team has an equal voice. Of course there will always be hierarchy, but he truly believes in learning from bottom-up as well.

He is not afraid to make public appearances, as he frequently does public interviews and podcasts. Nothing wrong with that in my opinion. It’s a nice way to gain some visibility and credibility.

4.2. CFO - Lucas Montarce

Lucas Montarce spent over two decades rotating through nearly every critical financial and operational sector of the business before becoming CFO.

He served as the CFO of Lilly International and most recently as the President and General Manager for the Spain, Portugal, and Greece hub. He was the CFO of Lilly Research Laboratories (LRL), where he worked closely with the scientific teams to align financial resources with drug discovery.

4.3 Chief Scientific & Product Officer - Daniel Skovronsky

Dr. Skovronsky joined in 2010 when Lilly acquired his startup, Avid Radiopharmaceuticals. He rose quickly, becoming Chief Scientific Officer in 2018. As of late 2025, his role was expanded to oversee not just R&D, but the entire global product strategy for metabolic, immunology, and neuroscience

4.4. (EVP & President, Lilly International) -Patrik Jonsson

Jonsson joined as a sales representative in 1990 in Sweden. Over 35 years, he has led nearly every major geographic hub, including Italy, Japan, and the United States, before taking over the entire International division in 2025

5. Obesity/Diabetes Market and TAM

Before we start, let’s make it clear that obesity and diabetes are getting very intertwined. Diabetes was sort of like the foundation, and that infrastructure is now being used to dominate the obesity market.

Both business models are designed to treat the entire spectrum of metabolic health, even allowing a patient to move from diabetes management to weight loss and other related areas like heart and kidney health.

What Lilly and Novo both do: sell the exact same chemical compound under two different names, one for diabetes and one for obesity.

This allows them to navigate different insurance coverage rules and marketing regulations.

More on that later

5.1 Obesity

Let’s define what Obesity actually is:

Obesity is a complex, chronic disease defined by excessive, abnormal body fat accumulation that poses significant health risks. It is generally diagnosed in adults with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or higher.

There are usually 3 classes in obesity:

• Class I (Obese): BMI 30.0–34.9

• Class II (Moderate): BMI 35.0–39.9

• Class III (Severe/Morbid): BMI 40.0 or higher

We all know obesity is a big thing, punt intended. Some even talk about a pandemic.

That’s because bbesity numbers are rising fast, mostly in first-world countries. But in the last decade there’s also a sharp uptick in EM-countries like in Brasil and China.

According to Novo Nordisk, who openly share there research on this matter, there are currently 1 billion people living with obesity and/or diabetes in the world. Of those 1 billion people, only 2% is currently receiving treatment. The addressable TAM is there for taking.

Obesity can be found in most parts of the world, but Europe, North America and South America are definitely the key focus areas for both Lilly and Novo Nordisk. It's estimated that two in five adults in the United States live with Obesity.

As you can see in the picture below, these aeras have the highest numbers of obesity in the world. There are also parts in Africa and the Middle east with high obesity numbers, but they do not get the same attention, yet.

This is likely because of the unorganized healthcare systems and these usually ‘‘poor’’ aeras simply cannot afford medication.

IQVIA (which is a global leader in healthcare information) estimates that by 2035, 1.53 billion adults will be suffering from obesity. Keep in mind, this does NOT include the overweight segment. If you include overweight people as well, the total number would reach 3.3 billion people (over half of the world population).

The financial impact is equally significant, with these conditions projected to reduce the global economy by more than $4T annually by 2035, equivalent to nearly 3% of global GDP.

IQVIA projects that between 2026 and 2034, the global AOM (anti obesity medication) market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13–15% and the total market size is expected to reach approximately $130B.

Biologics are leading the way in the obesity drug market, with GLP-1 and GIP receptor agonists holding the major share.

However, non-biologics are expected to regain some market share in the forecast period as the market diversifies and new treatment options emerge.

5.2 Diabetes

What is Diabetes?

Diabetes is a chronic metabolic disease characterized by high blood sugar (glucose) levels, resulting from the pancreas producing insufficient insulin or the body inefficiently using it. It causes serious, long-term damage to nerves, blood vessels, eyes, kidneys, and the heart.

Lilly and Novo both used to be ‘‘diabetes companies’’. They focused on both type 1 and 2 diabetes, and it’s important to know the difference.

• Type 1: An autoimmune condition where the pancreas produces little to no insulin.

• Type 2: The body does not use insulin effectively (insulin resistance) and cannot produce enough to compensate.

For diabetes, a similar marco-trend is witnessed as is with obesity. According to Precedence Research, the global type 2 diabetes market size is predicted to reach around $79.25B by 2035, increasing from $43.26B in 2026, expanding at a ‘‘healthy’’ (yes pun intended again) CAGR of 7.05% from 2026 to 2035.

That’s significantly slower than the obesity sector, but still decent growth. As you can imagine, the focus for both Lilly and Novo is on the obesity sector right now. And that makes perfect sense.

Growth is supported by better screening and early diagnosis, along with the rising use of advanced treatments like GLP-1 therapies for blood sugar control and weight management. Improving healthcare access is also helping expand treatment adoption.

The global type 1 diabetes market size is calculated at $37.60 billion in 2025 and is predicted to increase from $40.54Bin 2026 to approximately $79.14B by 2035, expanding at a CAGR of 7.73% between 2026 and 2035.

5.3. GLP-1 Market

Looking at the total GLP-1 landscape, steady growth is expected in the next decade. Morgan Stanley estimates that the GLP-1market can scale from just shy of $80B in 2025 to $190B in 2035.

They state that the GLP-1 market is at an inflection point, mostly because of the launch of oral therapies and the expansion of Medicare access in the U.S.

This new wave of potential clients should do well for overall adoption.

In Morgan Stanley’s base-case scenario, nearly 30% of the obese or diabetic population in the U.S. and 10% in the rest of the world are likely to be treated with GLP-1 therapies by 2035, up from approximately 6% in the U.S. and 2% internationally in 2025.

I also looked at the forecasts from Goldman Sachs, who are certainly not as bullish.

Goldman Sachs Research forecasts the global market to reach $95B by 2030, which is lower than its previous estimate of $130B. This new figure reflects trends influencing how these drugs are priced, how long patients stay on them, and how patient populations are segmented

They do however see a lot of room for growth in non-US markets, which is clearly visible in their outlook below.

Then we have Deutsche bank, they too expect GLP-1 adoption to significantly increase in the next few years, especially the combination of oral + injectables. Demand is certainly there. And yes, why wouldn’t it be with the obesity numbers increasing so much?

I’m somewhere stuck in the middle of it all. I think the GLP-1 market will definitely continue growing, but it will all depend on availability, price and worldwide adoption.

It’s hard to put a number on it. Especially with the the oral market just opening up. The long-term impact, but also the long-term effects on how many new patients will come to the market is difficult to assess.

But the simple fact is. This market will grow. It will grow fast. But how fast, is just open to interpretation.

I’d like to quote IQVIA here, as this perfectly reflects my reasoning:

By the end of the decade, the obesity market enters a far more competitive and mature phase.

It is no longer useful to think of obesity as a single, monolithic market. Instead, the market becomes highly complex and deeply segmented, shaped by body mass index, comorbidities, and by differences in patient profiles and preferences, including route of administration, dosing frequency and tolerability.

6. Eli Lilly Product offering

6.1 Segments

In my opinion, Eli Lilly has a more diversified portfolio right now than Novo Nordisk. The majority of their revenue comes from the segment they call Cardiometabolic Health (CH), this includes diabetes and obesity). The segment makes up 76.7% of total revenue and it’s share is increasing. The other segments make up:

• Oncology: 13.6%

• Immunology: 7.6%

• Neuroscience: 2.10%

As you can clearly see below, CH is also by far the fast growing segment. This is the primary focus for now and the future for Lilly.

6.2 Key contributors

So which drugs are the main contributors to overall growth?

Right now, It’s Mounjaro and Zepbound. And it’s not even close.

I’ll tell you more about them later, but first we have to understand what Tirzepatide is and why it’s so competitive. Because this molecule is actually the core of Eli Lilly’s success.

6.2.1 Tirzepatide

Tirzepatide is the active ingredient in both Mounjaro and Zepbound. It’s a so-called Dual Agonist.

That means that it basically mimics two hormones (GIP and GLP-1). The are hormones that regulate appetite, feeling satisfied and blood sugar.

GLP-1 controls hunger and blood sugar and GIP is thought to improve how the body breaks down sugar and fat.

For comparison, Semaglutide (which is Novo’s active ingredient for Ozempic and Wegovy) only targets the GLP-1 receptor.

In head-to-head trials, Tirzepatide showed greater, faster weight reduction than Semaglutide, and that’s one of the key reasons why it’s so popular.

Mounjaro, Wegovy, Ozempic and Zepbound are given once per week as injections under the skin (subcutaneously) in the stomach area, thigh or upper arm.

Both Lilly and Novo have also been working on an oral version. Novo has started sales of their Wegovy pill in January of this, and Foundayo (basic ingredient is Orforglipron), which is Lilly’s counterpart), came to market in April..

More on the oral versions and how they are doing later.

6.2.2. Mounjaro + Zepbound

Mounjaro came to market first. It is FDA-approved to treat Type 2 Diabetes and it is a once-weekly injection. It is intended to help people with diabetes lower their A1C (average blood sugar) and improve insulin sensitivity.

Lilly ran five main studies (SURPASS-1 through 5) to see how Tirzepatide stacked up against existing treatments. Even though these were diabetes trials, people lost between 8% and 14% of their weight, which tipped Lilly off that they had a massive weight-loss drug on their hands

In general: the higher the dose, the higher the weight loss.

A few years later, Zepbound was brought to market, specifically targeting weight loss management.

It is approved for adults with obesity (BMI 30+) or those who are overweight (BMI 27+) with at least one health issue like high blood pressure. In late 2025, it was also approved to treat Obstructive Sleep Apnea.

Side effects

Like with most of the weight-loss drugs, both have positive and negative side effects. Some of the positive ones are:

• Significant reduction in the risk of heart attacks and strokes

• It helps clear fat from the liver (MASH) and reduces strain on the kidneys

• It combats chronic joint pain or general "puffiness" seems to disappear, likely due to anti-inflammatory effects

The negative ones are quite common and well-known:

• Nausea, diarrhea, and constipation are very common (about 20-30% of users)

• Smelly breath, often compared to the smell of eggs

• Very rare: risks of pancreatitis, gallbladder issues and a rare type of thyroid tumor (not seen with humans yet, only in rats)

• And a side-effect that’s related to almost every comparable drug: the loss of muscle mass. If you lose weight too fast without eating enough protein or lifting weights, you can loses muscle mass along with the ‘‘regular’’ fat.

Mounjaro and Zepbound have taken the market by storm. Eating away the early mover advantage Novo Nordisk had with Ozempic and Wegovy.

Simply put: the Tirzepatide drugs are widely regarded to be the ‘‘better ones’’, compared to the Semaglutide counterparts.

While Mounjaro and Zepbound are running the show right now (bringing in $36.5 billion combined in 2025), Eli Lilly has some other relevant drugs to mention as well.

Here are the drugs contributing the most to Lilly’s revenue after the big two.

I will talk about Foundayo later, as this was has just been released and numbers are unclear.

1. Verzenio (Cancer)

This is Lilly’s clear number three. In 2025, it pulled in $5.72B. It’s used to treat certain types of breast cancer, and while its growth isn’t quite at “weight-loss drug” speeds, it’s a massive, reliable revenue engine that continues to expand into earlier stages of treatment.

2. Trulicity (Diabetes)

Trulicity is in a bit of a “graceful retirement” phase. Because it’s an older GLP-1, many patients are switching over to Mounjaro. Even so, it remains a multibillion-dollar product, likely landing in the $4–5B range for 2025 despite double-digit declines.

3. Jardiance (Diabetes & Heart Failure)

Jardiance contributes around $3.5B annually. It has stayed relevant by proving it’s good for more than just blood sugar and it’s also widely prescribed for heart failure and chronic kidney disease.

4. Taltz (Immunology)

For plaque psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis, Taltz is Lilly’s go-to. It consistently generates over $3B a year. It’s a competitive market (fighting against giants like AbbVie’s Humira/Skyrizi), but Taltz has carved out a very profitable niche.

Some other noteworthy ones are, Inluriyo (both oncology) and Kisunla which is their Alzheimer bet.

6.2.3. Foundayo

Now, let’s look into Foundayo for a bit. Because in my opinion what happens in the oral space, will determine the next winner.

Foundayo is Eli Lilly’s bet in this segment.

Foundayo (with the core ingredient Orforglipron) is a once-daily small molecule (non-peptide) oral GLP-1 receptor agonist,

The "small molecule" is actually important to keep in mind, because unlike Semaglutide, which is a peptide drug requiring strict handling conditions, Orforglipron is a small molecule, meaning it follows standard small-molecule chemistry and doesn't require the same formulation complexity as peptide-based GLP-

Foundayo was FDA approved on April 1st, really no joke. It was available in markets soon after.

Looking purely at weightloss, the Wegovy pill is ahead.

In the ATTAIN-1 trial, people taking the highest dose who stayed on treatment lost an average of 12.4%, compared to 0.9% for placebo. Including everyone who started the trial, not just completers, the average was 11.1%.

Oral Wegovy’s numbers are higher. In the OASIS 4 trial, oral Semaglutide 25 mg achieved 16.6% mean weight loss at 64 weeks with full adherence, compared to 2.7% for placebo. One-third of adherent participants achieved at least 20% weight loss. Including dropouts, the average was 13.6%.

• Foundayo 12.4% vs oral Wegovy 16.6% (efficacy estimand)

• Foundayo 11.2% vs oral Wegovy 13.6% (Both all-comers:)

So that means 11.2% for Foundayo and 13.6% for Wegovy, which is a significant win for Wegovy.

Where Foundayo genuinely wins is usability. Foundayo can be taken any time of day without food or water restrictions, whereas oral Wegovy must be taken in the morning on an empty stomach with no more than four ounces of water, waiting 30 minutes before eating or drinking.

Personally I think this usability benefit is really overstated.

Here are the differences summarized.

Some new data came in on June 8:

Lilly reported Foundayo beat oral semaglutide head-to-head in type 2 diabetes (ACHIEVE-3): 9.2% weight loss and 2.2% A1C reduction at 17.2 mg vs 5.3% / 1.4% for oral sema. Lilly plans to file Foundayo for T2D with the FDA by end of Q2.

Foundayo’s launch
Foundayo’s launch has been a bit underwhelming to say the least. Compared to the Wegovy pill launch, Foundayo is clearly underperforming.

Lilly stated that this is due to their need to build brand awareness. CVS Caremark removes the new-to-market block on Foundayo effective June 1, 2026.

Foundayo’s performance still tracks ahead of Novo’s injectable Wegovy and Lilly’s Zepbound at the same point in their respective rollouts, so it might look worse on a first glance that it actually is.

Eli Lilly stated multiple times that they believe their targets can still be met. Analysts believe that Foundayo will rack in about $145M in the Q2, and even reach $1.6B for the full year. (source Jefferies)

6.2.4. Eli Lilly’s Pipeline

Now, lets briefly discuss Eli Lilly’s pipeline, because there is one very important drug that is high anticipated. Retatrutide.

This is Lilly's next-generation obesity drug, and the data looks very promising. Mounjaro/Zepbound hit two receptors (GIP + GLP-1), but Retatrutide is a triple hormone receptor agonist that activates GIP, GLP-1 AND glucagon receptors.

Weightloss numbers look very strong. In the TRIUMPH-1 trial, participants on 12 mg Retatrutide lost an average of 28.3% of body weight over 80 weeks. 45.3% of participants achieved ≥30% weight loss.

Lilly is studying Retatrutide across multiple Phase 3 trials, focusing on obesity, type 2 diabetes, knee osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, chronic low back pain, cardiovascular and renal outcomes, and metabolic liver disease.

FDA submission is likely coming in 2026/2027 if the remaining readouts hold up

Some other noteworthy drugs in the pipeline:

• Tirzepatide: The base drug is already approved for diabetes and obesity, but Lilly keeps expanding its label

• Kisunla (donanemab) for Alzheimer's

• Eloralintide: amylin receptor agonist heading to phase 3, at ADA it showed 20% weight loss on the amylin pathway alone

• MORF-057: bit of a wild card, after the $3.2 billion acquisition of Morphic. This is a oral integrin inhibitor targeting ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, currently in Phase 2

Main focus is and will be on Tirzepatide, which is expected to further bolster Eli Lilly’s strong position in the GLP-1 market.

6.5. Noteworthy pipeline developments for Novo Nordisk:

A quick sidenote, because last weekend Novo presented a lot of new data. I didn’t get a chance to dive in deep, but there where some noteworthy headlines to take into consideration. I’ll mention them here, as they do provide more insight into Novo’s pipeline.

CagriSema (REIMAGINE, type 2 diabetes) Three Phase 3 trials published at ADA in The Lancet. REIMAGINE-2 (the metformin arm) is showing ~1.91% A1C and ~14.2% weight loss over 68 weeks.

Zenagamtide (formerly amycretin) Single-molecule GLP-1/amylin agonist. Phase 2 in T2D: up to 14.6% weight loss and 1.71% A1C at 40 mg / 36 weeks. That looks strong, but ~34% of patients on the 20/40 mg doses withdrew (at 40 mg: 37% nausea, 29% vomiting, 37% diarrhea). Phase 3 starts H2 2026, first results are not expected before 2028.

UBT251 is Novo’s triple agonist, acquired from United Laboratories (China) in 2025. It showed~19.7% at 24 weeks at the top dose with no plateau yet. Caveat are the demographics: heavily female (~60–64%), young (~33 yrs), and lower starting BMI (~33 vs ~37 for Retatrutide’s Phase 2).

These are the most noteworthy competitors for Lilly in the future, so we should keep tracking them.

I will be doing a GLP-1 deep dive later this year, and I will cover the trial-data more in-depth then.

This is the end of the free part of the Deep Dive. The next part is for paid subscribers only.

Paid subscribers get access to: all my buys/sells, all of my portfolio updates, access to the private section of my discord, exclusive content, my investment library and my full access to all deep dives and articles.

In the last section I cover:

• Lilly’s business model

• Lilly’s competitive advantage

• Lilly’s competitors and how they stack up

• Risks and headwinds

• Deep dive into the financials

• My bear/base and bull case valuation models

• My plan and approach for Eli Lilly and the GLP-1 sector

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May was a great month for me. This is because I spend time away from the stock markets and had some time to recharge.

I’ve spend 3 weeks in Tuscany with the family, and we had a blast. Fantastic weather, great environment and a lot of time to relax and spend quality time together.

Instead of watching the markets like a hawk, I now spend my days at the beach and pool with my wife and our son. We’ve also thoroughly enjoyed the Italian wines and food, and I had like 10 instances of my favorite desert: Tiramisu.

If you haven’t been, I highly recommend visiting sometime!

But now we are back home! And luckily, I always feel great coming back to our house as well. Nothing beats my own bed and shower.

While sitting at the beach, my portfolio actually had another great month, with close to a 10% gain.

This means that since inception (01-01-2023) my portfolio is up 143% (compared to 104% for the SP500), which means a ≈29.6% CAGR over an almost 3.5 year period.

My returns since tracking the portfolio:

• Performance 2023: 32.32%

• Performance 2024: 28.95%

• Performance 2025: 20.42%

• Performance 2026 (YTD): 17.52%

In this portfolio update I will give insight into:

• All my holdings + cost basis

• My overall performance (vs. benchmarks)

• All my buys and sells this month

• Quick thoughts on the market

• Sentiment list + a short update for all my holdings and watch-list

Because I did not spend a lot of time watching markets, this will be a shorter update than usual.

Portfolio updates and real-time updates on when I buy and sell companies are exclusive to paid subscribers.

Paid subscribers get: full access to my deep-dives, real-time buy and sell notifications, all my portfolio updates, access to the private section of my discord, and lots of other exclusive content.

I’m planning to raise my prices at some point this year as the newsletter grows and the amount of content and value continues to increase.

If you subscribe now, you keep the discounted rate, even after the raise.

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1. Performance

Below is my monthly and YTD performance (in Euros):

• Monthly performance: +9.87%

• YTD Performance: +17.52%

These are the YTD results for my benchmarks.

• Nasdaq100 (in dollars): +17.80%

• SP500 (in Euros): +9.87%

• Russell2000 (in dollars): +14.20%

• AEX: +6.47%

• All-world ETF ( VWRL ): +8.88%

Below is an overview of my portfolio including valid metrics like costs basis and YTD.

This overview is added to my live portfolio tracker in the Google Drive as well. This also includes the sentiment and watchlist which you will see later in this update. (link was given earlier in this update). Feel free to dm me if you have trouble accessing it.

I also updated the entry levels, which I will do more often from now on.

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Welcome to this 9th edition of my Investing Explained’’ series.

This is weekly series in which I cover a broad spectrum of investing-related topics.

The goal is straightforward: to educate both myself and you, the reader, and learn about a wide range of investing topics.

Today’s topic: Superinvestors

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It’s almost that time of the year again, 13-F filings.

In case you do not know what that is: 13F filings are mandatory quarterly reports filed with the SEC by institutional investment managers with over $100M in assets under management.

What that means for us: we’re gonna get insight into the moves of the ‘‘best’’ investors in the world.

But, we should not just blindly copy them.

In this article I will explain the nuances in how you should interpret these 13F filings and also who my favorite Superinvestors are to follow.

The nuance here being: follow, not copy.

1. The best Superinvestors to follow

Of course, it’s highly subjective which one you think is the best Superinvestor.

But, below you can find the 5 that I like to track above all the others.

At the end of this chapter I will name a few others that I think are great as well.

1.1. Dev Kantesaria - Valley Forge Capital Management

Performance: ~15% annualized since 2007 vs. ~10.5% for the S&P 500

Kantesaria focuses on companies with predictable revenue streams and strong competitive advantages, with a long-term focus.

He currently has 9 holdings, and most of them he has held for a long period.

He buys when companies get reasonably priced and basically never sells, treating valuation as secondary to business quality. Avoids anything that could see a “tragic decline” from regulation, competition, or industry shifts.

He’s having a rough period with holdings like FICO, SPGI and V. So I’m very curious if he made some moves in Q1-26.

1.2. Chris Hohn - TCI Fund Management

Performance: ~18% annualized since inception vs. ~9% for the S&P 500. Made $18.9B in net gains in 2025 which is the largest single-year hedge fund profit on record.

Chris Hohn is seen as a concentrated activist. He usually holds about 9–12 positions, and his top 5 routinely 80%+ of the book with an average holding period of around 8 years.

He hunts for moats with serious pricing power (infrastructure, exchanges, rails, data monopolies).

Just like Dev Kantesaria, he does not trade a lot. In general he buys and holds, until the thesis changes.

I highly recommend watching this podcast if you want to learn more about his investing style and philosophy.

Below is an overview of his current holdings:

1.3. Stanley Druckenmiller - Duquesne Family Office

Performance: ~30% annualized over 30 years at Duquesne with zero down years. Closed the fund in 2010 because of the stress of maintaining the record at $12B AUM.

Druckenmiller might be my favorite superinvestor now. I like listening to the man, he’s extremely smart and well-versed.

His strategy can be described as: Top-down macro with concentrated, high-conviction bets across stocks, currencies, bonds, and commodities wherever the setup is best.

He famously thinks 18–24 months ahead, ignores the present (already in the price), and sizes huge when conviction is there (”put all your eggs in one basket and watch it carefully”).

He is brutal on risk management and cuts losses fast and presses winners hard.

While he is very interesting, it’s hard to really follow along, as he makes a lot of moves and is not afraid to exit and enter positions, a lot.

Being almost 5 months behind, makes it impossible to replicate.

He is however great for idea generation, as he covers all parts of the market.

Two great podcasts which I highly recommend:

His current top holdings:

1.4. Warren Buffett - Berkshire Hathaway

Performance: 19.9% CAGR from 1965–2024 vs. 10.4% for the S&P 500 — total return of ~5,502,284% vs. ~39,054% for the index.

This list would not make sense without the GOAT, Warren Buffett. He has proven over the years, he is something truly special.

Although his last couple of years aren’t even that great.

Still, when he buys or sells. Stocks move.

The so-called Buffett effect.

Since he also covers a wide range of the market, Berkshire is a great place to find some new stocks to discover.

1.5. Pat Dorsey - Dorsey Asset Management

Performance: Strong first few years (>20% annual), but rough patches with PayPal, Alteryx, Chegg, and Disney since 2018. Cumulative ~216% since 2013 inception

Pat Dorsey built Morningstar’s moat framework, then went out on his own to put it to work. He usually runs a very concentrated portfolio of 10–15 wide-moat businesses with reinvestment runways and good capital allocators.

He leans heavily into capital-light tech (network effects, switching costs) over traditional ROIC-screen value, since accounting doesn’t capture intangible-driven moats well anymore.

He is very strong on framework, but weaker on recent execution.

1.6 Some other noteworthy Superinvestors to track:

• Christopher Bloomstran - Semper Augustus: Concentrated quality-value investor famous for his exhaustively detailed annual letters.

• Altacapital: Canadian–based asset manager running concentrated 20–35 stock portfolios of high-quality US large-caps with sustainable competitive advantages, strong free cash flow, and reasonable valuations

• AKO Capital: London-based long/short and long-only equity firm founded by Nicolai Tangen in 2005, focused on owning quality compounders globally. He likes businesses with pricing power, recurring revenues, and the ability to invest counter-cyclically; Tangen left in 2020 to run Norway’s sovereign wealth fund.

• Leopold Aschenbrenner - Situational Awareness: this guy is all over social media now, because he is absolutely crushing it. He is a former OpenAI researcher (now 24) running a thematic AGI-focused hedge fund launched in 2024, seeded by the Collison brothers, Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross; he bets aggressively on the physical bottlenecks of AI scaling: power generation, semis, data center infrastructure, crypto miners using concentrated long positions and call options

• David Tepper- Appaloosa Management: Legendary distressed-debt and macro investor who founded Appaloosa in 1993, famous for going hugely long beaten-down US banks in early 2009

2. How to read the 13F-filings

The 13F filings are always reported on a quarterly basis. Each quarter, around the 2nd or 3rd week of the 2nd month of the quarter, the majority of the Superinvestors file their 13Fs.

The first thing you should keep in mind:

These filings are always lagging by ATLEAST 45 days.

It’s still interesting to see what the Superinvestors have done, but the moves they made could’ve have been 4.5 months old already.

They might have done the complete opposite since making these reported moves.

So it’s very important to be aware of the type of Superinvestor you’re check out. It really changes the perception if you’re reading a long-term investor’s 13F filing, or a (swing)-trader with a more momentum based mindset.

Another thing you should keep in mind when reading the filings: these funds have completely different objectives, goals and timeframes than most retail investors.

Their goal is usually beating a benchmark by a few percentage points over a full cycle, not necessarily doubling their money fast.

A 12% annualized return on billions is a career for them. And it’s enough.

They also buy for reasons most retail investors can't replicate: tax optimization across entities, hedging exposures elsewhere in the book, or building a 3% position over six months without moving the price.

Their downside is career risk and client redemptions, so they care deeply about position sizing and drawdown control, while a retail investor is usually focussed on maxing gains as quickly as possible.

And last but not least: A 13F only shows "long" positions and gives no insight in short positions or cash holdings.

It's also only US equities (or equities listed in the US) we get insight in.

A lot of funds used shorts as hedges and have capital invested across the world, and that does not show up in these filings.

Keep that in mind, it’s only part of the strategy.

3. How I use Superinvestors’s 13F filings

For me these 13F-filings only mean one thing: Inspiration

I like to watch what these smart Superinvestors have done. I never blindly copy them, but they are great for ‘‘idea creation’’.

Obviously they do due their due diligence and they also usually follow a wide variety of stocks.

Combine all of the filings together, and you have large coverage of the overall market.

I have a list of investors that I like tracking, and I simply go through their buy/sells for the quarter and see if I notice overlap, but also check for new names that I never heard of.

The easiest way to do this is by using the website Dataroma: Dataroma

This website keeps track of all the buys/sells in an easy to read overview.

They also have an overview of overall positions and big bets.

I’d highly recommend browsing the website, it’s super useful and easy to navigate.

Some other websites that track portfolio’s are:

• Hedgefollow

• Fiscal.ai

• Valuesider

4. What I’ll be doing this month when the filings drop

So in about two weeks, these filings will drop.

As usual, I will be following most of the filings, skimming and browsing.

Looking for new ideas and overlap in the buys and sells.

What I’m most curious for: have some of these investors rotated more defensively?

Do we see more rotation towards SaaS and defensive stocks as this bull-run in semis/ AI buildout continues?

I’m also very curious how Druckenmiller is positioned and if David Tepper is still bullish on China.

Noteworthy: The Iran conflict is probably not well reflected in these filings. We will have to wait another 3 months to find out how they treated this conflict.

I will share some of the interesting ones via notes, and if you guys want I can make an update after all the filings are in?

Is that something you would like to see?

That’s it for today! I’m looking forward to these new filings in a couple of weeks.

I hope you are ready now too!

Let me know: who are your favorites Superinvestors to track and why?

See you at the next one!

TacticzHazel

PS. I don’t ask for much, but if this was useful, the best thing you can do is share it with one person who invests.

That's how this newsletter grows.

A like also doesn’t hurt.

Here is an overview of the previous articles:

• How to Start Investing

• The Best Investment Research Tools

• How to use the P/E Ratio

• The January Effect

• Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA)

• How to do Research

• The VIX Explained

• Stagflation

This newsletter is completely reader-supported. Do you enjoy my content and or/think it’s valuable? Considering become a free or paid subscriber. If you’re in a position to chip in for a paid tier, it directly funds the time that goes into this writing.

Either way, thanks for being here.

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Disclaimer

The content I share is for educational and informational purposes only. It should not be considered financial, investment, or trading advice. All opinions expressed are personal views and are not guarantees of future performance. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of capital, and past results do not indicate future returns.

Before making any investment decisions, you should conduct your own research or seek guidance from a licensed financial advisor. I am not responsible for any financial outcomes resulting from actions taken based on the information provided.

By engaging with this content, you acknowledge and agree that you are solely responsible for your own investment choices.

Just a quick update on two position changes I made today.

As always, I inform my paid subs about any changes to the portfolio I make.

As always I will also send an update in the paid sub chat and in the premium section of the discord.

I decided to trim two of my positions, namely:

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April was a great month, not just for the portfolio but also on a personal level.

This month I finally decided to register myself as self-employed entrepreneur. It’s something I have been considering for a while, but never decided to go for it.
I will of course keep my day-job, but I do think this is the right step to take. I’m taking Substack very seriously and I do want to built this is something long and lasting.

Investing wise, a great month as well. The portfolio rebounded strongly, and I'm now back in the green and up almost 8% YTD.

Even tough the Iran conflict is still ongoing, the overall market seemed unfazed. With strong upward EPS revisions across the board, the market wanted to go up, and so it did.

The primary driver of this market remains the Semiconductor industry in my opinion, with the SMH ETF being up almost 30% in just the last month.

The AI buildout continues to push the markets higher. As long as we see continued spending there (which we are seeing), I think we have not reached a tipping point yet.

Because of the balance in my portfolio I do have decent exposure to semis, which really offset some of the losses in my Emerging Market and SaaS holdings.

But other holdings actually did very well too.

Some of the strongest performers in my portfolio this month were:

• Nebius: +53%

• Amazon: +31%

• Alphabet: +28%

And who would have thought, even Novo Nordisk did a lovely 14% this month.

Overall, I’m still very pleased with how my portfolio is structured and I’m convinced it’s in a great position to continue to outperform my benchmarks.

Since inception (01-01-2023) my portfolio is up 121% (compared to 93% for the SP500), which means a ≈27% CAGR over an almost 3.5 year period.

Compared to the VWRL (which is an all-world ETF in euros), the outperformance looks even stronger.

Investing €100k in my portfolio would have outperformed the VWRL with €71k over this period. (€221K own portfolio, €150k VWRL).

Every month I will give insight into how my portfolio has done that month. In these updates I will provide information on:

• What my portfolio looks like (holdings + cost basis)

• Performance (vs. benchmarks)

• All my buys and sells

• Sentiment list + a short update for all my holdings and watch-list

On top of that I launched a live Portfolio tracker + Investment Library for my paid subscribers. More information can be found here here:

Portfolio updates and real-time updates on when I buy and sell companies are exclusive to paid subscribers.

Paid subscribers get: full access to my deep-dives, real-time buy and sell notifications, all my portfolio updates, access to the private section of my discord, and lots of other exclusive content.

I’m planning to raise my prices at some point this year as the newsletter grows and the amount of content and value continues to increase.

If you subscribe now, you keep the discounted rate, even after the raise.

Subscribe now

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I haven’t been as active as I wanted this month.

This is both due to a busy work month and some personal issues that needed more attention.

Raising a kid sometimes requires more attention then we’d like.

I will also go on holiday next weekend for three weeks, and I will not be writing and researching a lot.

Therefore I thou…

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This is weekly series in which I cover a broad spectrum of investing-related topics.

The goal is straightforward: to educate both myself and you, the reader, and learn about a wide range of investing topics.

At the bottom of the article you can find the links to my previous posts.

Today’s topic: Stagflation

In today’s article I will explain what stagflation is, and why it matters today.

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What is Stagflation?

The Iran War has triggered a new major worry for investors: Stagflation.

The energy shock that was triggered when Trump decided to invade Iran, could lead to a period of stagflation.

This is not something to look forward to.

Periods of stagflation have historically led to relatively poor investment returns, although probably not as bad as you might think.

So, first, what is stagflation?

Stagflation is the combination of high inflation, stagnant economic growth, and elevated unemployment

We can measure stagflation based on 3 components:

• (high and /or rising ) Inflation

• (weak) Job market —> rising unemployment

• (slowdown of) economic growth

As you probably realize, this is like a worst case scenario for economies.

Weak economic growth, combined with high inflation and a weak job market leads to uncertainty in the stock market.

It also puts central banks in a tough dilemma.

If they raise interest rates to battle inflation, they risk slowing the economy further and also potentially worsening unemployment.

If they lower rates to stimulate growth, they may spark higher inflation.

2. The Three components of Stagflation

I first want to briefly explain the 3 major components: how they are measured and how you can track them.

After that we will dive into the numbers and see how stagflation is very relevant today.

2.1. Economic growth

First, how well is the economy holding up. Economic growth can be measured in several ways.

• GDP - Gross Domestic Product —> Measures the total value of everything produced inside a country’s borders

In this reading it does not matter who owns the businesses (local or foreign). Think of it this way: A German company, located in the Netherlands, counts towards Dutch GDP.

• GNP - Gross National Product —> Measures the total value produced by a country’s citizens and companies, no matter where they are

In this reading, income from abroad is counted as well. But, it excludes income earnings by foreigners inside the country.

So, a Dutch company, located in Germany, counts towards Dutch GNP.

• GNI - Gross National Income —> Focuses on total income earned by residents

This one is very similar to GNP. It includes wages, profits and investment abroad.

GNI = GDP + income from abroad − income paid to foreigners.

Out of these three, GDP is the most used metric. It’s the global standard. Organisations like the IMF and World Bank use it, so countries do the same, as it’s the easiest way of comparing.

It’s also the simplest and most practical way to measure an economy.

Data is easy to collect and the focus of the data is clear: production within a country’s borders.

The one measure to watch: GDP

2.2. Inflation

Then the second component: Inflation. The 4 most referenced inflation measures are:

• CPI - Consumer Price index

• PCE - Personal Consumption Expenditures

• Headline vs Core

The CPI is calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It tracks what a fixed basket of goods costs: what does it cost a typical household to buy the same stuff month after month?

The PCE is measured by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Instead of a fixed basket, it adjusts for what people actually spend.

So if beef gets expensive and people switch to chicken, PCE picks that up. CPI doesn’t.

The PCE generally shows lower inflation than CPI.

However, the FED targets PCE, not CPI.

Specifically, they target 2% on the PCE.

So when the FED talks about inflation being “at target” or “above target,” they’re looking at PCE.

However, most headlines use CPI because it comes out first and people are used to it, but the FED doesn’t care much about CPI directly.

It’s also important to differentiate between Headline and Core inflation. The difference mainly being that with core inflation food & energy is taken out of the equation.

The most important measure to watch: Core PCE.

Note: this is a US Measurement. Other countries have their own equivalent. Eurozone has HICP, UK uses CPI (different calculation than the US) and Japan has it’s own CPI.

2.3. Job market

Last, but not least: the job market numbers. The key measurements to watch here are the:

• Unemployment rate

• Payroll Changes

• Jobless Claims

The Unemployment rate is the percentage of people in the labor force who are actively looking for work but don't have a job.

Keep in mind, it only counts people that are actively searching. If someone gets discouraged and stops looking, they fall out of the calculation. So the unemployment rate can actually drop during bad times simply because people gave up.

Payroll changes tracks how many jobs were added or lost in the economy that month, excluding farm workers.

+200,000 means the economy created 200,000 net new jobs. It's more direct than the unemployment rate because it doesn't depend on who's "actively searching.

Jobless claims measures how many people filed for unemployment benefits for the first time (initial claims) or are continuing to collect them (continuing claims). This is a weekly measure and therefore seen as the earliest warning systems.

The most important measure to watch: Non-Farm Payroll changes.

3. Stagflation in 2026

So, how does this translate to today?

Inflation is clearly rising. In the US the March CPI rose to 3.3%, which is the highest point since april 2024.

The latest Core PCE numbers was 3% in February. As we said: this is excluding energy.

In Europe we see a similar picture.

The latest ECB survey showed that 1-year inflation expectations are up from 2.5% to 4%. The 3-year perception rose to 3%.

The primary reason for these inflation increases are surging energy prices.

The Iran conflict has led to higher energy prices worldwide, with oil prices rising the fastest.

Growth is stagnating as well. Growth in Europe has been lackluster for a while, no changes there. GDP growth in the US is also stagnating. Emerging markets still show decent growth, but stagnation there as well.

Rising commodity prices, firmer inflation expectations, and tighter financial conditions are testing the recent resilience in economies.

The unemployment rate in the US has been rising since april 2023, albeit not super fast. Currently sits at 4.3%. That’s a decent number on the surface, but the broader U-6 measure (which includes discouraged and underemployed workers) ticked up to 8%, suggesting more slack than the headline suggests.

The Eurozone shows a different picture. Higher unemployment, but in a steady decline since 2012.

The difference per country is huge though. Germany and the Netherlands sit at around 4%, while Spain is at 9.8% and France at 7.8%.

Globally, job markets are under pressure because of tariff-driven hire freezes. Manufacturing in Europe is particularly weak.

So let’s summarize:

Stagflation = slowdown economic growth, high inflation and high unemployment.

✅ GDP growth is slowing down
✅ Inflation is rising
✅ Job market seem to be worsening

We check all the markets for potential stagflation.

Is it clear-cut that it will happen?

No, we are not there yet.

But I give like a 50/50 percent chance of stagflation hitting the US and EU economies, with Europe leading the pack when it comes to highest probability.

If the situation in the Middle East is not resolved, the likelihood of stagflation increases fast.

And it seems Trump is not in a hurry to end it anymore. So let’s see how that plays out.

4. Impact on investing returns

So how will that potentially impact your investment returns?

In general: low growth is bad for sales, and it negatively impacts business returns.

That would in turn also usually lead to lower investment returns.

But, let’s dive into some numbers here.

I found a great piece by Schroders in which they researched investment returns in an stagflationary environment, and I will highlight their key findings. Link to the full article here: Schroders article

Their key finding: Equities perform well in around half of stagflationary environments.

When assessed relative to cash, equities come out better, outperforming cash more often than not.

Positive stock returns during stagflation weren't dependent on the market having fallen the year before, nor on interest rate cuts. Good years happened even when rates were rising. That's reassuring for today's environment.

The most important thing to take away when looking into stagflation periods is: in which sectors you invest matters a lot.

Winners historically:

• Energy and materials: they benefit when commodity prices drive inflation higher

• Utilities and consumer staples: people still pay their electricity bills and buy groceries regardless of the economy

Losers historically:

• IT and communication services have a poor track record during stagflation, partly because higher interest rates reduce the value of future earnings, hitting growth stocks particularly hard

• Financials have performed poorly too, as stagflation often inverts the yield curve, which squeezes bank profit margins

In a stagflationary environment it’s even more important to pick the right sector or companies.

Stock picking matters more than usual.

This is especially true when the whole market is not just going up together.

Balance sheet resilience and pricing power will be important at the company level.

Something that might surprise you: Europe might actually be better positioned than the US. The US stands out for its large allocation to the IT sector, which has historically struggled during stagflation, while its allocations to sectors that perform better are all relatively low.

Europe is overweight to utilities and underweight to IT and communication services, while the UK’s 16% allocation to consumer staples and 10% to energy are more than double any other major market.

5. Conclusion

Let’s sum all this up.

Stagflation seems to be on it’s way.

But there is no need to be overly worried.

Stocks don’t perform great, but they also don’t perform overly bad.

Focus on finding strong companies, with a solid balance sheet and pricing.

Do that, and you’ll likely be just fine.

Personally, I do not rotate out or into companies based on macro-economic shifts like this.

I hold my stocks during these times, and will likely add to my positions when valuations turn more favorable.

If you want to do anything: you could position yourself into energy, utilities and consumer staples.

But keep in mind, these sectors have also already had a quite strong run-up in the past months.

Anyway, that’s it for today.

I hope you enjoyed and learned a thing or two.

See you next week and thanks for reading!

Cheers,

TacticzHazel

PS. I don’t ask for much, but if you liked this article, please give it a like or share it. Really helps me out!

This newsletter is completely reader-supported. Do you enjoy my content and or/think it’s valuable? Considering become a free or paid subscriber. If you’re in a position to chip in for a paid tier, it directly funds the time that goes into this writing.

Either way, thanks for being here.

Subscribe now

Want to read more? Below is a list of articles I published in this series thus far.

• How to Start Investing

• The Best Investment Research Tools

• How to use the P/E Ratio

• The January Effect

• Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA)

• How to do Research

• The VIX Explained

Disclaimer

The content I share is for educational and informational purposes only. It should not be considered financial, investment, or trading advice. All opinions expressed are personal views and are not guarantees of future performance. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of capital, and past results do not indicate future returns.

Before making any investment decisions, you should conduct your own research or seek guidance from a licensed financial advisor. I am not responsible for any financial outcomes resulting from actions taken based on the information provided.

By engaging with this content, you acknowledge and agree that you are solely responsible for your own investment choices.

This is weekly series in which I will cover a broad spectrum of investing-related topics.

The goal is straightforward: to educate both myself and you, the reader, and learn about a wide range of investing topics.

At the bottom of the article you can find the links to my previous posts.

Today’s topic: The VIX.

In this article I will explain what the VIX is and how it should/could be used.

What is ‘‘The VIX’’?

The VIX can be thought of as a crowd-sourced estimate for the anticipated volatility of the S&P 500.

In general, bobody talks about the VIX, until it rises.

And usually it rises when shit hits the fan.

Tariff threats? Boom.

Iran invasion? Another boom.

Anytime the market is in turmoil. The VIX rises.

Stock prices can rise and fall for many reasons; but usually, it’s sentiment.

And the VIX is great to get a feeling for changes in sentiment.

First, let’s get one thing out of the way: there is no such thing as ‘‘ The VIX’’.

It is used often as if there is only one, but there are many different flavors.

The one most commonly referred to, and lets consider this the OG, is the S&P500 VIX.

This VIX measures the 30-day implied volatility on the S&P 500.

It reflects how much volatility options traders expect in the stock market in the near future, expressed as an annualized percentage.

But there are other VIX’es as well:

• VXNSM — Nasdaq-100

• VXDSM — Dow Jones

• RVXSM — Russell 2000

• VVIX — “VIX of VIX.” Measures the expected volatility of the VIX itself

• OVX — Crude Oil

• GVZ — Gold

• VXEEM — Emerging Markets

And also different timeframes:

• VIX9D — 9-day

• VIX3M — 3-month

• VIX6M — 6-month

• VIX1Y — 1-year

For this article’s sake, we’re gonna stick to the S&P500 VIX.

Some background:

The VIX was introduced by the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) in 1993. It was originally named the CBOE Volatility Index.

For those interested, this is how the VIX is measured:

It is calculated as a weighted average of out-of-the-money call and put options on the S&P 500:

Where τ is the number of average days in a month (30 days), r is the risk-free rate, F is the 30-day forward price on the S&P 500, and P(K) and C(K) are prices for puts and calls with strike K and 30 days to maturity.

Enough difficult math.

How should you read the VIX?

There is not one clear-cut way to do it. But let’s start with the general premise:

The higher the VIX is, the more fear there is in the market.

As a rule of thumb:

A VIX of 15 implies expected annualized volatility of 15%, while a VIX of 40 implies very volatile times ahead (40% expected volatility)

When the VIX is above 40, the world is usually on fire.

A major event is causing a major disruption.

Investors are scared.

Usually price spike downwards.

Here is a basic guideline of how to interpret the VIX levels.

• 0–20: Normal uncertainty. This is where the VIX spends most of its time during stable periods.

• 20–30: Anxiety is rising. Something is creating fear in the market

• Above 35–40: Genuine fear. Crisis mode. Historically, spikes above 40 have marked major dislocations. The 2008 financial crisis sent the VIX near 90. COVID-19 in March 2020 pushed it above 85.

• Above 60: sell the house and go all-in.

How does this look in practice?

SPGI did a great research piece, and I’m gonna show one of their key findings.

The chart below shows what the S&P 500 did in the 30 days after the VIX was low (below 12), normal (12–20), or high (above 20).

When the VIX was low, returns clustered tightly around small positive numbers, calm stayed calm.

When the VIX was normal, the spread widened a bit but outcomes were still mostly modest.

But when VIX was above 20, the curve flattened out completely, with 30-day returns ranging anywhere from -20% to +20%.

The VIX doesn’t predict direction, but it does predict the size of the move.

A high VIX means buckle up, either way.

The latest big VIX spike was during the Trump Tariff announcement in April last year.

In August of 2024 we had the biggest intraday VIX spike ever. The VIX spiked over 180% to nearly 66, driven by the rapid unwinding of the Japanese yen carry trade.

This was one of the largest intraday crashes ever.

Events like the COVID-crisis and financial 2008-crisis also caused major VIX-spikes as you can see below.

Relationship with the S&P500

The VIX and the S&P500 usually move in opposite directions. When the stock market falls sharply, the VIX rises.

When stocks gradually increase, the VIX trades flat or lower.

This isn’t a symmetrical relationship.

Fear hits hard.

The VIX shoots up faster during sell-offs than it comes down during rallies.

And we should not ignore this asymmetry.

It means extreme VIX readings are actually quite rare, and historically, they’ve been some of the best buying opportunities in the market.

And Warren Buffett agrees with me.

Warren Buffett was sitting in his chair, watching the VIX spike when he came up with one of his most famous quotes ever:

‘‘Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”

While I was not there, I am 100% sure this is what happened. It would make perfect sense.

The VIX is simply a great instrument for reading fear.

And I’m sure he was reading it.

So, how should you use the VIX?

As we concluded earlier, the VIX is not a crystal ball. It says absolutely nothing about whether prices will actually move up or down.

But it CAN help you.

How?

Treat it as a sentiment signal.

Does it spike above 35? Markets are pricing in a terrible period.

Adding to your holdings during these periods was great timing historically speaking.

Does it feel right in the moment?

Probably not.

But think about it. That’s why it actually makes perfect sense.

As Robert Arnott said:

In investing, what is comfortable is rarely profitable,”

The best buying opportunities rarely feel good.

This also works the other way around. When the VIX barely moves, and has been low for a while, that’s usually a sign of excessive complacency.

While it feels comfortable and everyone is cruising at these levels, it’s actually a great time to check your risk exposure and make sure you’re not caught off guard.

Another way to use it, is as a hedging signal.

You could consider buying some protection for your portfolio (i.e put options) when the VIX is low or cheap.

You should think about insurance before the storm actually takes off.

Most retail investors do the opposite, they actually panic-buy protection when it’s already too late and overpriced.

You could also use it as an indicator for sizing your positions.

One way to do it is to scale equity exposure based on where the VIX sits: take on more risk during calm periods and trimming during high-volatility times to keep the overall risk profile consistent.

And last but not least: use it as a sanity anchor.

When markets are crashing and every headline screams disaster, some people cave in and start selling.

Understanding that extreme VIX spikes are temporary, and have historically marked buying opportunities rather than permanent losses, can be the difference between staying invested and making a decision you’ll regret.

The VIX has always come back down.

This is basically how I use the VIX.

As a sanity check. And as a sentiment thermometer.

Keep in mind: The VIX measures expected short-term volatility, not direction.

A High VIX simply means turbulence ahead.

It DOES NOT tell you which way prices move.

Want to track the VIX?

The best way to do it is in Tradingview. Set up a free account.

Look for the ticker: VIX

And select Volatility S&P 500

That’s all for today. I hope you learned a thing or two.

See you next week!

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

TacticzHazel

This newsletter is completely reader-supported. Do you enjoy my content and or/think it’s valuable? Considering become a free or paid subscriber. If you’re in a position to chip in for a paid tier, it directly funds the time that goes into this writing.

Either way, thanks for being here.

Subscribe now

Want to read more? Below is a list of articles I published in this series thus far.

• How to Start Investing

• The Best Investment Research Tools

• How to use the P/E Ratio

• The January Effect

• Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA)

• How to do Research

Leave a comment

Share

Disclaimer

The content I share is for educational and informational purposes only. It should not be considered financial, investment, or trading advice. All opinions expressed are personal views and are not guarantees of future performance. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of capital, and past results do not indicate future returns.

Before making any investment decisions, you should conduct your own research or seek guidance from a licensed financial advisor. I am not responsible for any financial outcomes resulting from actions taken based on the information provided.

By engaging with this content, you acknowledge and agree that you are solely responsible for your own investment choices.

We’ve still only been scratching the surface in this beginners guide and I plan on learning a lot more. And you can tag along.

Therefore I decided to make this into a new series. In this ‘‘Photonics Explained’’-series, I will cover all parts of the Photonics supply chain and the companies associated with it.

This will be through the lens of someone learning about the space.

Easy-to-understand language and not too much jargon.

In this article I will explain why copper is reaching it’s limit in datacenters and where Photonics comes in and how it solves some of these issues.

Let’s first start with copper.

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Copper

In datacenters, copper is most well-known for its use in cabling, but it's actually used for power distribution, thermal management, and data movement too.

For this article, we're going to focus on the data movement usecase.

Copper is usually seen as cheap, reliable, and simple. Copper cables cost 30–50% less than fiber optic alternatives and they can deliver power alongside data (Power over Ethernet), and the existing infrastructure is already massive.

There is a lot to like here.

Copper has been the backbone of electronic interconnects for decades. For most of that long period, it was working just fine. But with all the new innovation in AI, the requirements have changed, and copper is hitting the limits of what it can do.

Copper cables simply can't handle network speeds of 1.6 terabits per second and above. At those speeds they become too short and too thick to be practical.

The existing infrastructure, which worked fine for years, is now hitting a hard ceiling.

To understand the problem, you first need to understand this: the more GPUs you need to connect, the faster you need them to communicate with each other.

A GPU rack is a large metal cabinet filled with rows of GPU chips stacked on top of each other, all wired together so they can work as one unit. Think of it like a bookshelf, but instead of books, each shelf holds powerful AI processors.

Copper links are quite power-efficient and reliable, but they are limited to very short distances (let’s say under 1-2 meters) which restricts their use to within a single GPU rack.

Copper was perfectly fine when the clusters weren’t that big, but now Nvidia is planning to link hundreds of GPUs together into one massive system, and copper simply can’t bridge those distances at those speeds.

So, different racks at larger distances is a problem for copper.

Today's Blackwell systems (the GB200 NVL72) connect 72 GPUs inside a single rack using copper. That works just fine, the distances are short enough.

But, Nvidia is now also actively pushing toward clusters of 576 GPUs spread across eight racks. As the scale-up configuration grows from a single rack to cross-rack deployments, copper-based interconnects can no longer meet the required performance demand.

Pushing electrical signals to high speeds through copper results in signal degradation and very high levels of power consumption. Both are of course unwanted.

More speed = more heat = more power = more cooling needed. It compounds quickly.

And when it compounds like that, it costs more too. And nobody wants even higher costs.

So, why does copper create that much heat? That’s because electrons face psychical resistance once they travel trough the actual metal.

Below is a visual of how that looks like.

High resistance for copper. Low and smooth resistance in optics.

This resistance has some unfortunate side effects: it creates a lot of heat and consumes a lot of power. Copper simply is a inherently resistant medium, which will always require a lot of power to the send data over distances at high speeds.

So, copper is hitting a wall: also often called: the Copper Wall or the Copper Cliff.

This is the point where the physics of copper simply can't keep up with what modern AI demands in terms of speed, distance, and energy efficiency.

So what are these limits copper is reaching?

Let’s first talk bandwidth. Bandwidth is basically the maximum rate at which data can be transferred over a network connection. But, bandwidth shrinks with distance.

For example, at 10 Gbps (gigabites per second), copper cables work just fine up to 30 meters. But when you push that to 100 Gbps you're down to less than 10 meters.

We are now pushing towards 224 Gbps per lane and that means copper’s reach falls to under 1 meter. This means it can't even cross a single server rack anymore. Every time the data rate doubles, copper's usable reach drops by roughly 30–50%.

This is because copper does not handle high frequency well. High-frequency electrical signals don't travel through the full thickness of a copper wire, they actually travel along the outer surface.

This is called the skin effect.

The higher the frequency, the thinner that usable surface layer becomes.

Copper wires also start acting like antennas at high frequencies. They radiate energy outward and pick up interference from neighboring cables.

Interference in cables, often known as Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) or radio frequency interference (RFI), is an unwanted disturbance that disrupts, degrades, or distorts signal transmission

Unlike fiber, copper cables radiate and absorb electromagnetic energy. In high-density data center cabling, signals in adjacent copper traces interfere with each other. This crosstalk worsens linearly with cable length and with speed.

At high density the cables are placed very close to each other and the start interfering with each other. The faster the data and the longer the distance, the more interference is created.

Fiber doesn't have this problem at all, because light doesn't radiate outward the way electricity does. More on that later.

Another part that should not be overlooked is the fact that all this heat has to go somewhere, which means more cooling infrastructure —> more energy —> more costs.

Last but not least, there is also a psychical problem. When data rates increase, thicker cables are required to maintain the signal quality. That would not be a problem, were it not that there are literally thousands of these cables in the datacenters.

Thick cables are harder to manage, they block airflow and make it harder to cool the equipment around them.

To summarize all this: Copper definitely deserves a place in the rack for now, but optical takes over the moment you need to do cross rack traveling. That boundary is exactly where the copper wall sits at right now.

So is this the end of copper?

No not at all.

Engineers are working hard to extend it’s use case. We will briefly talk about that before we move on to photonics.

Co-Packaged Copper - CPC

First we have CPC, which stands for Co-Packaged Copper. Probably the most relevant right now.

What it does; it moves the copper connections directly from the ASIC substrate (which is the processer chip), to the cables. By doing so, it bypasses the traditional PBC (printed circuit board) traces.

PBC traces are conductive copper pathways etched onto a printed circuit board (PBC) that connect electronic components

Normally copper connections run through these PBCs. But CPC skips that entirely and connects the copper cable directly to the chip itself.

This ensures that the signal path is shortened, interference is reduced and it extends copper's usable reach without needing extra amplifiers or signal boosters.

It works great. The problem? It’s still very limited.

It’s workaround and not a solution.

It can extend the life span of copper for connections within the racks, but it still won’t solve the problem of being able to bridge the distances needed for next-generation AI clusters demand.

There are several other ways that could extend copper’s life-time, which I will highlight quickly here:

• Active Electrical Cables (AECs): this one is arguably the most relevant one besides CPC. These are copper cables with a small chip at each end that cleans up and retransmits the signal. It’s essentially giving the signal a refresh midway.

  

• Active Copper Cables (ACCs), which is basically a simpler version of AECs. They amplify the signal but don’t fully clean it up the way AECs do. They are cheaper and have shorter reach.

  

• PCIe Retimers: these are chips that extend copper connections between components on the same board.

  

All of these solutions could potentially buy copper some extra time. But none of them change the actual underlying physics.

At some point, the industry is gonna need completely different approach. And that’s where photonics comes in.

Nvidia is already switching to optical for the connections between racks.

A prototype of the GB200 NVL576 has already been shown, where connections remain copper inside each rack but shift to optical fiber between racks.

The longer-term roadmap goes even further. Jensen Huang revealed plans to use photonic interconnects to pack more than a thousand GPUs into a single massive system by 2028.

Copper’s role will be limited at that scale.

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Photonics

Let’s start with a quick summary of what ‘‘photonics’’ actually means.

Photonics is the technology of using light to transmit data, instead of electricity.

Where copper uses electrons moving through metal, photonics uses photons, which are particles of light, moving through glass or silicon.

The big difference? Light travels with almost no resistance or heat buildup.

Photonics solves copper’s problems

Remember the problems we just covered in the copper section? Photonics addresses and solves most of them directly.

First the bandwidth and distance. Light does not degrade over distance the way electrical signals do. Fiber optic cables can carry data over large distances (think kilometers) without any significant signal loss.

This creates another advantage: because light does not fight resistance, it generates almost no heat. That means less cooling, less need for energy and in turn lower costs.

Electrical cables have a lot of interference.

This does not apply here.

Light does not radiate outward or pick up signals from other cables that are close. You can pack thousands of fiber cables together and they won’t interfere with each other at all.

And then the space advantage. Fiber cables are way way thinner and lighter than copper at the same data rates. This makes them easier to manage, it creates better air flow and obviously less physical space consumed.

Key components of a photonic interconnect

To get a good feel for how photonics actually works, we have to understand the four main components that are involved.

First, and probably most important: the laser. The laser generates the light that will carry the data.

This is where it all starts.

Then we have the modulator. The data has to be encoded onto the light and that’s what this modulator does.

It switches the signal on and off at incredibly high speeds to represent ones and zeros, which is the basic language of all digital data.

Once that part is done, the data (using light) transfers through the fiber.

A fiber is basically a very thin strand of glass the acts as the carrier. The light bounces along the inside of the glass through a process called total internal reflection, which keeps it contained and moving forward

At the other end sits the photodetector. This converts the light signal back into electrical signals that the chip can actually read and use.

The chips themselves still run on electricity.

Photonics handles the travel in between, but once the data arrives at the end of the line, it still needs to be translated back into something the processor actually understands.

The whole process happens in nanoseconds, across distances copper could never handle, with a fraction of the heat.

Win-win-win.

Photonics is here

Photonics is not same futuristic theme, it’s already used. Fiber optic cables have been used for long-distance connections between data centers for years already.

Nothing new there.

But the next step is currently being implemented in speed mode: Photonics moving into the data center itself.

First between racks, but eventually it will also move between chips.

Nvidia has already shown a prototype where copper handles connections inside each rack, but optical fiber takes over the moment you cross rack boundaries.

This hybrid approach can be witnissed in their upcoming Vera Rubin NVL576 systems, in which they combine copper inside racks with optics for the spine layers.

But Nvidia’s roadmap goes even further: photonic interconnects connecting over a thousand GPUs in a single system by 2028.

To reach those goals, the big boys are moving, and they are moving fast. Not just with technology, but also by spending a huge load of money.

Nvidia has recently invested billions in photonics companies like Lumentum, Coherent, and Marvell to secure the supply chains.

Broadcom is building co-packaged optics directly into their chips.

And many more companies are investing heavily in ramping capacity and accessibility as well.

I don’t think we should ask ourselves: will this happen?

No, right now it’s simply a matter of ‘‘how fast.”

That’s it for now! Thanks for reading.

In the next articles, I'll go deeper into the photonics supply chain, the companies building the lasers, the fiber, and the components that make all of this possible.

If you found this useful, consider subscribing. These articles take a lot of time to research and write, and your support is what makes them possible.

And just to be clear: I’m not expert in this sector.

I’m a simple man, learning the basics. And you’re doing it with me.

If you wanna follow industry experts, I highly recommend checking out:

Until the next one!

Cheers,

TacticzHazel

This newsletter is completely reader-supported. If you’re getting value out of these posts, the best way to help me keep it going is to subscribe. Free subscriptions are always welcome and help the community grow. If you’re in a position to chip in for a paid tier, it directly funds the time that goes into this writing. Either way, thanks for being here.

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Disclaimer

The content I share is for educational and informational purposes only. It should not be considered financial, investment, or trading advice. All opinions expressed are personal views and are not guarantees of future performance. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of capital, and past results do not indicate future returns.

Before making any investment decisions, you should conduct your own research or seek guidance from a licensed financial advisor. I am not responsible for any financial outcomes resulting from actions taken based on the information provided.

By engaging with this content, you acknowledge and agree that you are solely responsible for your own investment choices.

Welcome to this new edition of my Investing Explained series. This is a weekly series in which I will cover a broad spectrum of investing-related topics. You can expect a new update every Wednesday.

The goal is straightforward: to educate both myself and you and ultimately helping us become more balanced and educated investors.

Below is a list of articles I published in this series thus far.

1. How to Start Investing

2. The Best Investment Research Tools

3. How to use the P/E Ratio

4. The January Effect

5. Dollar Cost Averaging

   ---

Since I’ve started taking investing seriously, I’ve been focusing religiously on improving my research methods and approach. To become a better investor, you have to become a better researcher.

You have to be willing to go where no one goes. Many investors shy away from going deep, as it takes a lot of time, and sometimes it’s hard to get started at all.

So, in this article I’m gonna give you the toolset to learn how to do your own research.

I’m not gonna teach you how to analyse financial statements or how to make a Discounted-cash-flow model. That’s not what this is about.

It’s more about the framework. The structure to use.

I will also tell you which tools, websites and sources I use. Most of them are completely free.

1. Watchlist

Before we start with the actual research part. Let’s first discuss the watchlist. Without a watchlist I’d be lost. There’s just too many companies to keep track of.

Set it up properly and you can keep track of companies you find interesting or deem research-worthy.

The three main tools I use for keeping a watchlist are:

• Tradingview : Tradingview

• SeekingAlpha: SeekingAlpha

• Yahoo Finance

  

With all three of them you can set up multiple watchlists and easily keep track of a wide range of companies.

Tradingview also has a very nice charting section which you can use if you like technical analysis.

I like to make clusters for different sectors or types of stocks to track them easily.

I also set up a watchlist for tracking indices, commodities and forex. This is the list I have on Tradingview.

It’s also incredibly easy to make your own watchlist in Excel or spreadsheets.
Here’s an example of how I set it up in google spreadsheets:

You can ask Gemini to help you set it up properly. Basically you use a lot of ‘‘Googlefinance’’ formulas to live track pricing and other metrics.

Here are some of the formulas I used.

=GOOGLEFINANCE(C9, “name”)
=GOOGLEFINANCE(C9, “price”)
=GOOGLEFINANCE(C9, “marketcap”)
=GOOGLEFINANCE(C9, “pe”)

Feel free to shoot me a DM if you need help!

Now, let’s get to the fun part. Research!

2. How to Research A stock

When I do my deep dives, I always have a specific structure in mind for my research. Below you can find that structure. However, each company is different. They have different product offerings, strategies, markets and are in different parts of their company lifespan. Be sure to adjust your research based on that.

Researching a €100M micro-cap does require a different approach than let’s say a Google or Microsoft. Simply because of the amount of information.

This is something that you’re gonna have to find out, simply by experience and hard work.

In the rest of the article I’ll explain my general approach. For each part I’ll elaborate on which questions I ask myself and which tools and sources I use.

The most reliable and most trustworthy sources to use are 10Ks and 10Qs.

That’s where you start.

Start at the website of the company you are researching and then go through the filings and reports.

This is the general structure I use in my research and for my deep dives:

• Origin Story (history of the company)

• Company Overview

• Management

• The Market - Sector - TAM

• The Product/Service

• Competition

• Risk and headwinds

• The Opportunity

• Financials

• Valuation

Of course, you can add chapters here. This is just a high level list. Other interesting aspects could be:

• Explain te moat (if they have one)

• Customer overview

• Business model / how they make money

2.1. The Origin Story

In this section I try to get a good grasp of how the company was founded. This is important to me as I want to know all about the foundation the company is built upon.

Some key questions to ask yourself here:

• Why was the company founded? What problem did it solve?

• Who were the founders, and how did they shape the company?

• What has been the strategy of the company since inception?

• How has the company changed over time?

• Who was responsible for the majority of the growth and when did it happen?

In general I just try to get a good feeling for how the company has grown into what it is today.

Sources I use:

• Annual reports

• Company website

• Podcasts (I like Acquired and Business Breakdowns)

• Gemini + ChatGPT are also quite helpful for this section as it’s all quite general and straightforward.

2.2 Company overview

In this section I dive a bit deeper into the company structure. I want to get a better feeling for culture, ownership, job openings and business structure.

Questions to ask yourself:

• What is the company culture like?

• Shareholder structure (inside ownership + institutional/retail ownership)

• Where are they located, do they have multiple offices?

• Number of employees and are they hiring?

• What does their communication style look like?

• What is their mission and strategy?

To give you an idea of what I look for, here are two examples:

• Novo Nordisk has a foundation that is a major shareholder. That really affects their overall vision and strategy. Being aware of such a structure is really vital.

• Constellation software has a huge number of operating groups and subsidiaries. Digging into that specific structure is vital to understand Constellation’s overall business.

Sources to use:

• Annual reports

• Quarterly reports

• Company website

• Earnings calls ( I use Quarter (phone app and Fiscal.ai —> 15% off fiscal.ai)

• Podcasts ( like Acquired and Business Breakdowns)

• Glassdoor Glassdoor

2.3 Management

One of the most important aspects of a business is the management team. When you invest in a company, you’re buying a small piece of ownership in the business. When doing that, you want management that you can trust. Management with a good track record.

I prefer management that is:

• Down-to-earth

• Open and transparent

• Non-hyped

• Honest

• Leaning toward conservative

• Lots of sector experience

Loud and overhyped CEO’s or management turn me off. I don’t need a CEO to sell me the company, I need the CEO to do a good job and make money for the shareholder.

I also want to get a feel for management’s skin in the game. Do they own shares, and if so, how many?

Another important aspect is execution. How well has management executed in the past years? This is quite subjective and open to interpretation. But very important nonetheless. Look up the different guidance reports of the last quarters, and see if they managed to accomplish it.

Sources I use to get a good feeling for management:

• Earnings calls/Q&A’s - Quarter (app on phone) and Fiscal.ai —> 15% off fiscal.ai

• Podcasts: A very good example is the ‘‘In good company’’-podcast from the Norges Bank Investment Management —> In Good Company Podcast

• Interviews on television and Youtube

• Finviz - I use for insider trading —> Finviz

• Insiderscreener - For insider buys/sells — InsiderScreener

  

2.4. Market + TAM

In this part I try to get an overview of what the overall market for the company looks like. You want to get a general overview here and try to find out whether the market is expanding or not.

Things to look for:

• Key trends/ macro-changes

• Geopolitical impact

• Total addressable market

• Sector head- and tailwinds

• Cyclicality of the sector

• Key drivers for the sector

This one is a bit tricky to find a specific resource for. I think it really helps to find trustworthy sources for the sector you are researching. Investment firms and banks sometimes have great coverage. But there are other research platforms to check out as well.

In general I use:

• Annual reports (own company + competitors)

• Quarterly reports (own company + competitors)

• Search engines and AI tooling like Gemini/NotebookLM/ChatGPT

• Banks, investment firms that cover the sector

• Research reports from both professional and retail investors (Substack has great content too)

  

2.5.The Product/Service

In this section I want to fully understand the product and/or service they offer. I usually start with company’s own website. That’s the best source most of the time, but especially for this chapter. Just dig through their product/service offering and soak in as much information as you can.

After that I try to look for reviews or external opinions on the service or product.

Some key things answer:

• What are their key products/services?

• What specific problem does this solve and is it mission-critical?

• Are they diversified?

• Do they have a competitive advantage?

• What is the growth potential?

• Where does most of their revenue come from?

Sources:

• Company website

• Company’s 10Ks and 10Qs

• Google Search/ AI LLMs

• Youtube —> video’s on the product or company

• Sector and market research platforms

2.6. How does the company make money?

One of the most important aspects of the research: how does the company actually make money.

First find out, if they actually make money. I prefer companies that are generating a lot of cash already or are on the brink of doing so. These ‘‘just-turning-profitable’’-companies tend to do really well.

After that, I’m curious what their business model looks like. Think along the lines of:

• Where does the revenue come from?

• What are there main costs and expenses?

• Is it scalable?

• Do they have pricing power?

• Do they have a moat?

• Who are their main customers?

The one and only source to use:

Company’s 10Ks and 10Qs —> this is the one and only reliable source to find information on financials.

Of course you can also use yahoo.finance or tradingview to find the data. But there’s always errors or mistakes in these websites. The own filings are always the best place to look.

2.7. Competition

After you’ve done the ‘‘market and TAM-research’’ part, you should have a good feeling for what the market looks like already and also have a feeling for the competition.

Doing research in this area simply requires sifting through websites and filings of all the competitors.

I also like reading sector deep dives or listening to podcasts. They can give a good overall view of the market as well.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Who are the main competitors?

• What position do the companies have in the market? (entrants or defenders)

• Are the companies gaining or losing market share?

• How do the products compare?

• How do the financials compare (profits, margins, growth etc.)

• Is there a high barrier-to switch?

Sources:

• Company websites

• 10K and 10Q filings

• Market or company research pieces

• Listen to industry experts on Youtube or Spotify

2.8. Risk and headwinds

When doing research you HAVE to focus on both the good and the bad. There is not a single company that does not have risks or headwinds.

Getting this to the surface is vital. You need to be able to make a solid assessment of things that could go wrong, which you can later use as the foundation for your valuation models.

Focus on:

• Geopolitical headwinds

• Macro events

• Regulatory shifts

• Interest rate sensitivity

• IP expiration

• Execution failures or hurdles

• Financial shenanigans

Sources:

• Company website

• 10K and 10Q filings

• Market or company research pieces

• Listen to industry experts

  

2.9. The Opportunity

Before you start your research, you should have already made the assumption that there IS an opportunity. Let me be clear: don’t say beforehand: it’s a buy.

But there has to be something that makes the research appealing in the first place.

In this section I try to break down what the key drivers for growth are and what needs to happen for the stock to do well and outperform the market.

Some questions I ask myself here:

• What positive catalysts do I see for the near and long-term?

• How will those catalyst impact the business?

• What are the sector tailwinds?

• Do they have a scalable business model?

• How do the financials and prospects look?

• What guidance does management give and is it realistic?

The main question I ask myself here: why does this opportunity exist now?

Sources:

• 10Ks and 10Qs

• Earnings calls - especially the Q&A section

• Research reports

2.10. Financials

For financials I want to learn more about the following aspects.

• Revenue —> growth, trend and forward looking

• Revenue distribution —> geographical distribution

• Portfolio distribution —> Product distribution

• Operating income —> How profitable are they?

• Free cashflow —> How much cash do they generate?

• Margins —> What do the Gross, EBITDA, Net and FCF margin look like and why?

• ROIC and ROCE —> Are they good at allocating capital?

• Dividend —> Do they pay a dividend and do they have a good pay-out ratio?

• Buybacks —> Does the company buy back shares, and how did that look like in the past?

• Capital Expenditures - How much do they have to spend on growth and why?

• R&D spending —> Do they invest in the future?

  

Getting to the bottom here is not easy. It requires some financial knowledge and a lot of digging. You need to take your time for this.

Try to learn understand the company as well as you can.

For this section I use:

• Company 10Q and 10Ks (always the best place to start)

• I use fiscal.ai for charting and to visualize the financials.

• Listen to earnings calls and Q&As to hear managements perspective on the financials. Just reading the numbers is not enough. You need to have clarification and guidance.

2.11. Valuation

Then the tricky part. Making a valuation model. As I’ve said in the beginning, I’m not going to guide you through how to approach exactly do this. There are so many ways to do it and so many variables to take into account (different for each company), it does not make sense to cramp it in a post like this.

They easy way to go about it by simply looking at metrics; Forward P/E EV/EBITDA, P/S, PEG-ratio etc. I suggest you look them all up, and try to find out which one fits well for the company you are researching. There is not a one-size-fits all metric, so you’re gonna have to do some more research here.

I’ve create my own valuation model to get a good feeling for the fair value of the company I’m researching. I used to make DCFs, but not anymore. Even minor tweaks or mistakes can completely alter the outcome. They still have a purpose, but I prefer more simplified models, like the one below.

Usually I make a bear/base/bull and afterwards a weighted average CAGR.

As of last week I now share all my valuation models with my paid subs. I Currently have:

Novo Nordisk, Kraken Robotics, ASML, Dlocal, Stif and Gabler Group. They look like the example below. Simple and easy to use. You can find more information here: Investment Library

Overview of all sources to consider:

Below is an overview of most of my research sources. You can also check out the post below for a more detailed look and some extra’s tools to use:

Research tools to use:

• Fiscal.ai (free and paid): fiscal.ai (affiliate link with 15% discount on all plans_

• SeekingAlpha: Seekingalpha

• Tradingview: Tradingview

• Finviz: Finviz

• Koyfin: Koyfin

• Insiderscreener: InsiderScreener

• Qualtrim (paid) - Qualtrim

• Sec.gov - Sec.Gov

• Vizualstocks: Vizualstocks

• Reddit (take everything with a grain of salt)

• Substack

• Glassdoor: Glassdoor

• Yahoo Finance: Yahoo Finance

• Quartr App: Quartr

• Openinsider: Open Insider

• GuruFocus: GuruFocus

• Koyfin: Koyfin

• FRED: FRED

• ETF: ETF.com

AI Tools to use (best to worst)

• Claude

• Gemini

• ChatGPT

• NotebookLM

• Perplexity

I also like to listen to podcasts, especially the ones that do deep dives. Always interesting to see how others approached this company and maybe even find some angles that I missed.

Some of my favorite podcasts to gain deep company knowledge are:

My favorite podcasts

• Acquired

• Business Breakdowns

• In Good Company

• Speedwell

• Chit Chat Stocks

So, now you have all the tools do to your own research.

I think Substack is a great place to find valuable insights on a very wide range of companies. On top of that, you can learn from the best.

I’ve listed my favorite Substacks that do great deep dives and have strong due diligence. You should definitely check them out (in no particular order).

That’s it for now. See you next week! I will be talking about the VIX! ;)

Let me know what you think of this research guide. Any thing I missed?

Cheers,

TacticzHazel

This newsletter is completely reader-supported. Do you enjoy my content and or/think it’s valuable? Considering become a free or paid subscriber. If you’re in a position to chip in for a paid tier, it directly funds the time that goes into this writing. Either way, thanks for being here.

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Disclaimer
The content I share is for educational and informational purposes only. It should not be considered financial, investment, or trading advice. All opinions expressed are personal views and are not guarantees of future performance. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of capital, and past results do not indicate future returns.

Before making any investment decisions, you should conduct your own research or seek guidance from a licensed financial advisor. I am not responsible for any financial outcomes resulting from actions taken based on the information provided.

By engaging with this content, you acknowledge and agree that you are solely responsible for your own investment choices.

While investing in popular names can be profitable and exciting, sometimes it’s a lot more lucrative and rewarding to look where the crowd isn’t looking yet.

And that’s what I did for this deep dive. Meet Gabler Group.

Gabler Group is a German small-cap that had its IPO on March 9th.

Don’t be mistaken, this is not just some startup.

It’s a company with over 60 years of experience and an impressive track record.

They have been a partner for large players in the naval and defense sector for many years now and have built a long track record of successful relationships.

Gabler Group is not widely covered. Actually, it’s not covered at all.

It’s still very much under the radar (pun intended).

First, why should you care about Gabler Group?

• They have a massive €359M order backlog

• 60+ years of experience in the submarine sector

• Dominant (60%) market share in their submarine mast segment

• A fast-growing subsea communications division

• A newly integrated pressure-neutral battery segment

• Riding the world-wide surge in defense spending due to increasing geopolitical tensions.

In this investment thesis I will explain exactly what Gabler Group does, how they do it and why Gabler Group should be on your radar.

Let’s dive right in.

1. Maritime security - Increased defense spend

1.1 Worldwide defense spend is increasing

Let’s first try to get a good picture on how the defense landscape looks like right now. If the Iran conflict (and all the other ongoing conflicts) has learned us one thing: sea and undersea infrastructure (CUI), such as data cables and pipelines, is now a matter of national importance.

Defense budgets worldwide keep rising.

Global top line defense spending is expected to reach $2.6T by the end of 2026 and it expected to hit $3T by the end of this decade.

The US are of course a major contributor to this growth as you can see in the overview below. No surprise there. We all know they go in hard, when it comes to defense spending. It’s what they do. It’s what their economy thrives on.

But it’s not just the US. China also does about $300B in defense spending as you can see below. The rest of Asia combined is close to $250B, amounting to a total of over $550B in defense spend.

1.2 Indo-Pacific Arms Race

That is because The Indo-Pacific arms race is rapidly intensifying. This seems to be mostly driven by China’s military modernization and expansion drifts, in turn causing a defensive response from the likes of the US, Japan, Australia, Taiwan, and South Korea.

At the core of this arms race is China, who are aiming to get an edge in the Taiwan Strait and East/South China Seas. Both very important strategic chokepoints.

This has led to an overall increased spend for Asian countries.

Some numbers:

• Japan is accelerating its 2% of GDP defense target to 2026, as Japan is investing heavily in counterstrike capabilities and unmanned systems.

• Taiwan is boosting it’s 2026 defense budget to record highs with an additional $40B over 8 years planned for procurement and the “Taiwan Dome” missile shield.

• South Korea wants to boost defense spending to 3.5% of GDP by 2035, focusing on developing nuclear-powered submarines

• India recently approved roughly $25B for naval and air investments

• The Philippines is projected to raise military spending by over 10% for the third consecutive year in 2026.

• Australia is investing an additional AUD 11.1B ($7.25 billion) over 10 years to create its largest fleet since World War II.

• Indonesia: Raised 2025 budget to $10.6B, focusing on purchasing modern equipment.

So, Asia and the US are going in hard. What is the EU doing?

1.3. NATO Defense spending

After hard pressure from the US, NATO member states have now abandoned the 2% GDP defense spending guideline they’ve had for decades. Nations closer to the frontline, which are already perceiving threats from the likes of Russia, are already moving toward defense targets of 4% to 5% of GDP. They have to stay ahead of the curve.

The broader EU alliance is debating the adoption of a formal 3.5% baseline benchmark by 2035, often referred to as the ‘‘The Hague Investment Plan’’.

This new target is part of a broader "5% of GDP" ambition, which includes an additional 1.5% for broader defense-related security, such as critical infrastructure, cyber defense, and resilience.

Germany has even bigger plans, and they aim to meet the 3.5% goal by 2029, way ahead of the 2035 deadline.

When all of these defense budgets increase, a big part of the capital flows down the supply chain to specialized tier-one integrators, like Gabler Group.

Gabler Group is positioned at a critical choke point in the overall ecosystem.

Let’s zoom in further.

1.4. Submarine spending

As you can imagine with this surge in defense spending, the underlying sectors also do great. Global submarine defense spending is surging. This is mostly driven by the US and it’s allies ($368B AUKUS deal over 30 years) to counter China and Russia. But other nations are also contributing and building their fleets.

The U.S. is currently spending approximately $50B on an annual basis on just underwater warfare, trying to maintain an edge in the Indo-Pacific and other relevant strategies locations.

• The bulk of the budget goes toward the Columbia-class ($11B) for nuclear deterrence and the Virginia-class ($27.2B total) for attack capabilities.

  

• Billions are also being funneled into the Submarine Industrial Base to fix production delays and workforce shortages at aging shipyards.

• Overall international spending is rising through the AUKUS pact ($368B over 30 years) and major fleet expansions in the UK, China and Russia.

• Submarine prices range from roughly $600M for a basic diesel-electric sub to over $15B for a single nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine.

Looking at the mast’s and antenna’s segment specifically; the below estimate seems reasonable to me. This would provide a bottom CAGR baseline CAGR of about 8%. But I believe they should be able to capture a bigger chunk and therefore grow faster.

All the cards align. This is increased spending will provide long-term tailwinds for a company like Gabler Group. They sit at a crucial chokepoint for underwater warfare and are set up well to capture a significant part of this sector tailwind.

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2.The Company

2.1 The Gabler Group

Gabler Group (formerly known as Gabler Maschinenbau GmbH) was founded in 1962 during the height of the mid-20th-century naval arms races.

During that period they mainly focused on standardizing mission-critical electrical and hydraulic mast systems for both the German Navy and allied NATO forces. This is still their core business.

But in the 21 first century naval warfare changed. Traditional mechanical parts were commoditized and margins were shrinking. Gabler had to do something. So they recently made a strategic pivot towards smart subsea architecture.

This transition completely changed their business model, from mostly passive components to now also being an active systems integrator. A big step forward to vertically integrating their systems, which I believe will be a major tailwinds moving forward.

Over the last couple of years, they have successfully shifted their focus toward advanced maritime autonomy, underwater data analytics and subsea power solutions.

The video below gives a good overview about what Gabler Group does, so I’d highly recommend watching it before you continue:

2.2. Corporate restructuring

In 2025 Gabler Group had a large corporate restructuring to optimize its portfolio for growth and to aim for higher margins. This new structure is also how they IPO’d.

First they sold off their Thermoform division to shed non-core assets and strictly focus its capital on offshore data applications and maritime defense. Thermoform is a producer of thermoforming machines for the production of plastic packaging. Cool business, but not what Gabler Group wanted to focus on in the next decades.

In the meanwhile they acquired SubCtech, a company with over two decades of expertise in proprietary subsea energy storage and lithium-ion batteries. SubCTech is now sole responsible for the revenue/growth of the so-called ‘‘Subsea Power’’-division.

They also have a minority stake in north.io, which is an ocean big data and AI specialist). On top of that they acquired Develogic, who are known to be experts in autonomous underwater communication and monitoring.

Both of them combined now make up the ‘‘Subsea Communications & Data’’-division.

More on the different segments later.

2.3.Possehl Stiftung

Let’s talk about company structure, cause I believe in Gabler’s Group case it’s important.

The Possehl-Stiftung (Possehl Foundation) is the sole owner of the Possehl Group, a large German industrial holding company. Before going public in March 2026, the Gabler Group was a fully-owned subsidiary of this Possehl Group.

When Gabler Group executed the IPO, the selling shareholder was Possehl Mittelstandsbeteiligungen GmbH, which is Possehl Group’s SME investment arm.

The Possehl-Stiftung is a philanthropic foundation based in Lübeck, Germany, and the sole shareholder of the Possehl Group, which is a large industrial holding company.

Possehl is known to operate by acquiring medium-sized enterprises and holding them long-term and then using those corporate profits to fund local charitable initiatives in Lübeck.

They fully acquired the different Gabler companies, Gabler Maschinenbau (submarine and naval technology) and Gabler Thermoform (packaging machinery), back in 2013.

Over the last few years, Possehl has put a quite aggressive plan into motion regarding Gabler’s defense and maritime arm, and in doing so they seperated the Thermoform arm of the company.

The IPO shifted Gabler Group to a 49.9% public free float. Because the Possehl Group kept the remaining 50.1%, the Possehl-Stiftung still remains the majority owner of Gabler.

3. Management

There is not a lot of public information on management and the amount of public appearances they have done is limited. We also have no earnings calls to go through, so I will keep it simple and only give a high-level overview here.

3.1 David Schirm (CEO)

Davis has been with Gabler for about 10 years now. He is the CEO but also has an active management position in develogic and he sits on the board of advisors for North.io. He’s been the CEO of Gabler since May 2019.

He is industrial engineer and holds an MBA and has a strong background in strategic management.

Before joining Gabler group he worked at Airbus for about 4 years.

This is one of the only public appearances from the CEO I could fine. If your German is rusty, you might have a hard time.

3.2. Ole Johannsen (CSO - Chief Sales Officer)

Ole is the CSO of Gabler Group, and he has close to 20 years of experience in the maritime industry. He has been in this role for about 3 years now.

Before that he took on a large variety of roles, with a focus on commercial strategy and market positioning. Ole holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration and engineering.

Before joining Gabler Group he worked at TTS Marine AS, as a sales manager for close to 10 years. TTS Marine AS provides machinery solutions for large vessels.

3.3. Supervisory Board

Then we have the supervisory board, consisting of Andre Neumann, Henning von Klitzing and Joachim Brenk. All have long track records and years of experience in their respective fields.

André Neumann is Head of Sales at NVL B.V. & Co. KG in Bremen. He held several senior positions within the Rheinmetall Group, including General Manager Electronic Solutions at Rheinmetall Defence Australia and Head of Sales Naval Systems at Rheinmetall Electronics GmbH

Dr. Henning von Klitzing is the Chief Financial Officer and member of the Management Board of L. Possehl & Co. mbH, a position he has held since January 2026. He has been a member of the Management Board of Possehl since 2013 and previously served as authorized signatory and Head of M&A / Legal at the company from 2006 to 2013. Before joining Possehl, he worked as an attorney with Latham & Watkins LLP and with Linklaters Oppenhoff & Rädler, focusing on mergers and acquisitions, venture capital, financing and corporate law.

Dr. Joachim Brenk has served as Chairman of the Management Board of L. Possehl & Co. mbH since 2017 and has been a member of the Management Board since 2009. Prior to joining Possehl, he held several management board positions at Homag Group AG between 2004 and 2009, most recently as Spokesman of the Management Board, during which time he accompanied the company’s IPO in 2007

The Supervisory board acts as an independent oversight body, monitoring and advising the Management Board on strategic growth. It oversees corporate governance, risk management, and major financial decisions to ensure long-term value for stakeholders

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4. Three different divisions

Now the fun part. Let’s talk products. With the new acquisitions, they have a very wide range.

Before we continue, let’s separate Gabler’s Group business in three core divisions.

1. Submarine systems: this is their legacy division and primary revenue engine right now, at 68.7% of sales

2. Subsea Power: responsible for 19.9% of total revenue (SubCTech)

3. Subsea Communications & Data: 11.4% of total revenue (Develogic and North.Io)

We will now dive into the different products that the Gabler Group offers. This will be a long chapter, but I think it’s incredibly important to realize how well Gabler Group is now vertically integrated with their new acquisitions.

The product portfolio is wide, and more importantly, complementary to each other.

That’s where the power lies.

4.1. Submarine Systems

As mentioned before, this is their legacy division. Gabler has built a strong name for themselves in this Submarine Mast field. Their hardware is now installed in over 185 subs worldwide.

I hear you thinking, I have seen ‘‘Das Boot’’, you don’t have to tell me what a mast does. You probably picture a marine sitting in the submarine looking through a periscope.

That’s certainly how I imagined it.

But that’s really not what these mast do. Not anymore.

These mast are fully integrated in the submarines, from start to finish in the production process. One could argue the submarine is built around these mast systems, and not the other way around.

They are not some modular accessories. They aren’t plug and play. The systems are designed directly into the foundational blueprints of the submarines, even years before the vessels are actually made.

The architecture of the submarine and Gabler’s products have to be closely matched and integrated with each other.

So what do these masts do?

They handle everything, from 360-degree cameras and radar to engine snorkels. Below is a short summary of what is integrated in the masts:

• Digital camaras, thermal imaging, and optronic sensors

• Radar systems to track ships and aircraft

• Specialized sensors to detect if enemy radar or radio signals are scanning the area

• The antennas for radio and satellite communications

As you can probably imagine, a submarine could not function without them.

Just to be clear: they own the mechanical engineering core, the hoisting system, the hydraulics, and the integration but they're not a sensor maker.

These mast systems are not not some standard mini hydraulic lifts. These mast have to withstand high ocean pressure and at the same time keep their sensors steady. They are highly complex, and widely integrated in the submarines they operate in.

Gabler's mast systems are the quietest in the industry. When a mast extends, it doesn't vibrate or make any mechanical noise, and by doing so, it keeps the sub hidden from enemy sonar and detection systems.

Competitors still struggle to match this high quality that Gabler puts on the table.

Once a navy integrates a Gabler mast into their new submarine designs (like the TKMS U212 or Hanwha KSS-III), Gabler is basically locked in.

It’s very hard to switch suppliers, and Gabler can reap the benefits through maintenance contracts. More on that later.

Beyond traditional mast systems, they have other products in this segment as well. If you haven’t yet, I’d highly recommend watching the video in the company overview section, because that gives a great overview of the different products they have. They really do a lot.

What else is in this core section?

• Subsea Control & Rudder Actuators
  Hydraulic and electrical rotary drives structurally integrated into the hull for depth and navigation control

• Uncrewed Surface Vessels (USVs)
  Torpedo-tube launched drones, such as the Ranger for intelligence and the Raider for tactical strikes. They operate autonomously while the main (host) submarine remains submerged.

  

• Modular Payloads: Retractable mast systems that can deploy aerial drones and remotely controlled 30mm cannons for surface engagements. Just to be clear, this is not a missile pop up mast, like the A3SM from Naval group. Also very interesting piece of equipment, but it’s a completely different use case.

• Lifecycle Services: This is their high-margin recurring revenue from maintaining, updating and recertifying components on the submarines that use Gabler’s products.

4.2. Subsea Power

This segment was virtually non-existent before the acquisition of SubCtech.

For FY 2025, the Subsea Power business unit accounted for 19.9% of the total Pro Forma revenue at € 12.3M. SubCtech’s revenue in 2024 was € 12.5M.

I believe this will be a very important segment for Gabler’s growth, so we will spend a bit more time going through their products.

We can divide their activities in 2 groups, ‘‘Ocean Power’’ and ‘‘Ocean monitoring’’.

SubCtech designs and manufactures high-efficiency, rechargeable lithium-ion subsea batteries and large-scale Energy Storage Systems (ESS). This includes the specialized "PowerPack" batteries used to propel Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs).

Their systems are engineered for extreme offshore durability, and usually have a design life of up to 25 years, maintenance-free titanium pressure housings, and a highly scalable "SmartPowerBlock" modular architecture.

4.2.1. Their core products

Basic Batteries
First we have the basic batteries. These basic batteries are small, simple power packs for sensors and diving gear. They have rechargeable Li-ion batteries and they are amongst the most efficient batteries in the world. They provide very high capacity combined with relatively low weight and small volume. SubCtech produces complete battery packs, which is called the PowerPacks™ with high-class certificated industrial cells.

Typical applications for these Basic Batteries:
• For any sensors/monitoring devices, buoyant to deep-sea
• Small vehicle power supplies
• Profiling equipment
• Professional diving equipment, e.g. for torches

Subsea Batteries
Then we have the Subsea batteries. Subsea batteries are the heavyweights of this group as they act as long-term power stations that sit permanently on the ocean floor to run large infrastructure for years.

These are high performance, highly reliable and highest-safety Li-ion rechargeable batteries specifically used for offshore subsea electronics. They are designed to live up to 25 years, and the batteries are qualified according to API17F, international or company specific standards. The batteries can be additionally qualified to UN T38.3 upon request.

In simple terms: This means the batteries are engineered to meet strict underwater industry standards and can also be certified to pass strict international safety tests required for global shipping.

Typical applications for the Subsea UPS:
• All-Electric Systems
• At energy production facilities to ensure that critical control systems and sensors are continuously powered
• Long-tiebacks
• CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage)
• Underwater Monitoring Systems for open water and wells

Vehicle Batteries:
Then there is the vehicle batteries, which are specially shaped to fit inside moving underwater drones and submarines. They too are rechargeable Li-ion batteries modularly divided into SmartPowerBlocks. The SPBs bring the highest capacity and combine safety, reliability and low weight.

Typical applications for the Vehicle Batteries:
• Underwater vehicles: AUV, ROV, submarines
• Surface vehicles: USV, boats
• Underwater equipment: monitoring stations
• Smart sensor power supplies

Energy Storage systems
Energy Storage Systems are essentially massive, heavy-duty underwater battery banks that power large-scale offshore infrastructure, like oil and gas facilities or extensive sensor networks.

They too, sit permanently on the ocean floor and they allow large underwater operations to run independently without power cables tethering them to the surface.

They are designed for deployments of up to 25 years and these ESSs are typically used as a backup system integration acting as an offshore renewable energy source.

Typical applications for our Energy Storage Systems:
• Backup energy source for offshore applications with high energy demands (>1 MWh)
• At Oil & Gas production facilities to ensure that critical control systems and sensors are continuously powered

Customized batteries
Basically a large range of batteries, but highly customized for each different client. Think of Glass Sphere’s, Double Li-Ion batteries and Customized Li-Ion batteries

Chargers
These chargers are fast and foolproof charging systems that talk directly to the batteries to constantly monitor temperatures and voltage, automatically shutting down if anything looks off. It’s designed to be incredibly easy to use. Just press a button to charge, discharge for safe transport, or run health checks.

Monitoring is also very easy, as all data and information can be accessed via a 7-inch touchscreen.

The PowerChargers are integrated with the Battery BMS in order to achieve multiple safety levels and fast charging.

4.2.2. Ocean Monitoring

SubCtech also produces autonomous environmental monitoring systems. These are called the ‘‘OceanPack" family of products. Think of precision pCO2 analyzers and data loggers. These systems are often deployed on ships and buoys for climate research, maritime surveillance, and water quality control in aquaculture.

OceanPack RACK.
First, the ‘‘RACK’’. This is a autonomous measuring system. It’s built into standard cabinets for large ships to continuously monitor water parameters while unattended. It includes its own power supply, data logger, and water pumping system, with plenty of room left over to add extra scientific sensors or automatic cleaning tools.

OceanPack CUBE
The CUBE basically takes the core features of the RACK, and packs them into a smaller lighter and portable case. It is ideal for temporary scientific observations on different vessels

OceanPack RACE
Then we have the RACE. Which is basically a lightweight, carbon-fiber monitoring system specially designed to fit onto competitive racing yachts. It uses extremely low power to automatically collect high-quality climate data, like CO2 and salinity levels, while surviving the absolute harshest ocean racing conditions

Oceanpack AQUA
Last but not least, the AQUA. The AQUA is a continuous monitoring system built specifically for fish farms and aquaculture facilities to track critical water quality markers like oxygen, pH, and nitrate.

SubCtech operates entirely as the Subsea Power segment and is part of a dedicated technology cluster called "Gabler Ocean," alongside Develogic and north.io, which we will cover next.

4.3. Subsea Communications and Data

This is one of the fastest growing segments for Gabler Group, it’s now about 11% of total revenue. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how fast it grows, as we haven’t had any numbers on that.

When the company IPO’d, management specifically highlighted it as one of their two “fastest-growing” business areas, so we’ll have to trust them on that.

Out of their €61.7M in total pro-forma net sales for that year, the Subsea Communications and Data division accounted for 11.4%. That translates to roughly €7M in direct revenue.

This segment is built around Develogic and north.io.

First Develogic. They build physical hardware that monitors the ocean. They create autonomous sensors and wireless acoustic communication systems. These devices can sit on the seafloor for years without needing human intervention, monitoring the environment or detecting threats to critical infrastructure.

Once they gather this information, they wirelessly beam the data through the water to passing submarines, underwater drones, or surface buoys.

Here’s a brief overview of their products:

Underwater Acoustic platform
These are acoustic systems that send data using sound waves. This lets researchers and offshore companies get real-time information from the seafloor without having to pull their equipment out of the water

Acoustic Recorders
These are essentially heavy-duty underwater microphones that sit at the bottom of the ocean and record ocean noise, marine life, or seismic activity over long stretches of time.

Subsea Pressure housings
These are incredibly tough, watertight casings designed to protect the electronics from the extreme pressure you get in oceans and seas.

Modular Seafloor lander.
Seafloor landers are sort autonomous science stations. They too are dropped on the ocean floor, at which they then sit for months or years. The collect underwater data for multiple applications: oceanography, aquaculture and O&G companies.

north.io collects underwater data resulting in large amounts of raw deep-sea information. north.io specializes in “Ocean Big Data”. They provide Artificial Intelligence (AI) and software platforms that act as the brain to process all of this raw sonar and acoustic data.

Their technology can take complex data that used to take weeks to process, and now analyze it in minutes and immediately turn it into clear and directly usable information.

With all these new acquisitions, Gabler Group now provides a complete digital service.

They are able to gather raw noise and data from the deep sea, process it using AI, and use that to deliver "ocean intelligence" to both military navies and civilian industries, such as offshore wind farms and carbon capture projects.

4.4. Subsea Drives

Early this year, Gabler launched a brand new “Subsea Drives” division. This division is focused on building seawater-resistant hydraulic and electric drive systems for modern submarines and the new uncrewed underwater drones Gabler is developing.

To lead this new division, Gabler brought on Alexander Homrich, who is the founder and Managing Director of AHE GmbH. AHE is a specialized hydraulics engineering firm.

Gabler and AHE actually started collaborating back in July 2025. That initial partnership was so successful that Gabler officially added Homrich to their management team at the start of 2026 to head up the Subsea Drives unit, though he continues to run AHE as well.

Gabler is directly integrating AHE’s specialized hydraulic engineering expertise to strengthen their position.

4.5 USV’s

A major recent milestone was the development of torpedo-tube launched Uncrewed Surface Vessels (USVs) —> Press release. They make these USV’s in a partnership with FLANQ.

Together they are building autonomous underwater drones designed to be deployed directly out of standard submarine torpedo tubes for surveillance or tactical missions.

The USV market will likely have much faster growth that the masts business so its important to their overall story.

The two USV variants will be known as Ranger for ISR, and Raider for strike. Both are fully compatible with standard submarine torpedo tubes, and feature a common 4.5- meter long, 300 meter depth rated hull, folding mast and keel, electric drivetrain, and multiple payload bays.

The Ranger is reusable and equipped with a sensor suite providing real-time surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, crucial for naval forces operating in contested waters. Ranger will allow submarines to discreetly deploy and recover the USV without exposing themselves to risk, thus ensuring mission success while maintaining stealth and operational advantage.

Raider, designed for single-use tactical missions can carry a user-supplied effector payload in its forward payload compartment, empowering naval forces to neutralize high-value targets without exposing themselves to direct threats.

5. The Business Model

The business model is not very difficult to understand. But, it’s not easy to execute.

The majority of revenue comes from signing military contracts. As mentioned before their submarine systems still provide for the majority of revenue and growth.

But the strength of the business model is the lock-in. When they sign contracts with a navy or government, they also secure maintenance, repair, and modernization contracts that last for 30-40 years or longer. That’s the usual life-span of these submarines.

This is the best revenue: recurring and predictable.

The switching costs for their customers is also very high. Producers rely on highly specialized sub-contractors like Gabler. It would be a nightmare to switch as the overall interface of the sub has to be completely redesigned. Those costs would be higher than the savings of maybe getting a cheaper contractor.

By the end of 2025, over a third of their scheduled work was tied up strictly in recurring service contracts.

6. Contracts and Programs.

As a lot of Gabler’s group revenue and growth comes from landing new contracts and tenders, it’s worth taking a good hard look in what contracts are signed and which contract are in the pipeline.

I will give you an overview of the contracts that are expected to contribute to their growth story, some confirmed, some still unconfirmed but still important.

6.1. Confirmed = Type 212CD with 12 submarines (Germany 6 + Norway 6)

The most noteworthy is the contract around the Type 212CD. Germany and Norway are currently partnered on a joint €5.5B defense program to build a fleet of next-generation stealth submarines known as the Type 212CD. For the Type 212CD, Gabler’s role is particularly critical. The “CD” stands for Common Design, and the entire platform is optimized for next-generation stealth.

TKMS signed the full 12-sub program in 2021, worth about €5.5B. Germany exercised options for 4 more in Dec 2024. Norway added 2 more in Jan 2026.

Gabler won a ender in May 2025 for the non-penetrating mast on this specific class.

First delivery is expected in 2029., but the program extends to the mid-2030s. This is Gabler's single biggest near-term program and a crucial growth driver.

There is also a strong possibility that Gabler is integrating the modular mast systems (like the TRIPLE-M or the newer FLANQ system) into this 212CD.

It’s hard to find a confirmation, as there is not a lot of public information here.

6.2. Confirmed =Type 212A + 209PN (Germany + Italy)

Germany's existing 6-boat 212A fleet is undergoing mid-life upgrades including new lithium-ion batteries, which was confirmed in a TKMS contract from Oct 2024. Gabler holds incumbent aftermarket and upgrade position.

The Italian 212A (Todaro-class) also generates recurring service revenue. This framework is explicitly cited in Gabler’s prospectus.

Gabler has been supporting the Italian Navy’s U212A fleet since 2016. In June 2025, they signed a fresh support contract with the German military’s procurement arm (the BAAINBw).

Then the 209PN, which is one of the newest significant additions to Gabler’s installed base. Portugal operates two Type 209PN submarines (NRP Tridente and NRP Arpão), delivered by TKMS around 2010, and Gabler is now the contracted aftermarket supplier for their mast systems.

It’s the first time Portugal’s 209PN submarines have been brought into Gabler's core focus.

6.3. Confirmed = South Korea - KSS-II (Type 214) + ongoing KSS-III

South Korea is one of the most important strategic markets for Gabler right now.
The core foundation is built on the KSS-II program. South Korea built nine Type 214 submarines (the Son Won-il class) under German license, and Gabler supplied the hoistable mast systems for these submarines.

However, the big opportunity lies in the KSS-III-class. Gabler supplies the hoistable mast systems for the KSS-III Dosan Ahn Changho class, and in early 2024 they signed an agreement with Hanwha Ocean specifically for MRO (maintenance , repair and overhaul) of those systems.

Gabler Korea was established on January 3, 2024, specifically to support the MRO partnership with Hanwha Ocean. It's based in Busan. next to where the actual ship-building takes place. This location now serves as the local hub for spare parts, technical support, and maintenance of hoistable mast systems on South Korean Navy submarines.

Nine KSS-III submarines are planned across three batches through the 2030s.

South Korea is now actively marketing the design internationally to Canada, the Philippines, Greece, and Morocco, which could lead to even more growth for this class.

6.4. Confirmed =Type 218SG - Singapore

The Type 218SG is a TKMS-built design derived directly from the Type 214 and type 212. In both these cl

asses Gabler was the mast supplier. That experience and history makes Gabler that natural and logical choice to also expand to 218SG class.

What makes Singapore worth watching closely is the pace of fleet expansion. TKMS signed the contract for two additional boats in May 2025, which now brings the total to 6. Boats three and four are currently completing sea trials in Kiel and are expected to be delivered to Singapore in 2028. The final two aren't expected until 2034.

Management is signaling Singapore as an active revenue growth engine in their prospectus.

6.5. Unconfirmed pipeline

A short overview of the pipeline, all of these are unconfirmed.

• Canada contract —> 12 submarines. Program is likely worth €10B+. The final decision is expected in H2-26. Two finalists: TKMS (Type 212CD) and Hanwha Ocean (KSS-III). If TKMS wins, Gabler almost certainly supplies the masts across all 12 boats. If Hanwha wins,

  Gabler Korea's proximity to Hanwha Ocean's shipyard puts it in a competitive position. The government plans a single winner so it won’t be a split contract.

  Each modern submarine requires 5–6 mast systems, meaning 12 boats would generate 60–72 mast units for Gabler.

• India Contract —> P751, 6 submarines. This contract is in the final pre-contract approval stage. Cost negotiations between MDL-TKMS and the Indian Ministry of Defense were completed in February 2026, final decision likely in May 2026. The contract includes an option clause for three additional submarines, potentially bringing the total to nine. Gabler would supply mast systems for all boats.

• Greece contract —> 4 submarines, Type 214 MLU. Greece's 12-year armament plan (2025–2036) includes 4 new submarines (TKMS Type 218/Type 209NG among candidates) plus mid-life upgrades on existing 4 Papanikolis-class (Type 214). MLU negotiations with TKMS ongoing, cost likely exceeds €1B. Both new build and MLU represent clear opportunities. Greece is already an existing Gabler navy customer

• Overall NATO fleet expansion —> NATO's 3.5% GDP defense target (agreed Hague, June 2025) is accelerating procurement across all member states. France, UK, Italy and Germany all have active naval modernization programs. Revenue should land between 2027 and 2032.

• Philippines contract —> 2 submarines. Hanwha (KSS-III), TKMS/Fincantieri, Naval Group (Scorpène) are all bidding for this contract. Not sure if Gabler can be part here, depends on who wins the contract.

Service/Maintenance

Gabler does not earn money just through new contracts, but also through service/maintenance. Currently they serve a wide range of navies, like India, Taiwan, Greece, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Turkey, Israel, Denmark, Pakistan, Egypt, Colombia and others.

Gabler structures its service business across four lifecycle phases: concept, build, in-service, and end-of-life. By doing so they position themselves as a partner for the full lifespan of every vessel they equip with their systems. The real money sits in phases three and four.

During the in-service phase, revenue comes from regular maintenance contracts, OEM-quality repairs, globally distributed spare parts stock, training programs, overhauls, and capability upgrades such as new sensors and low-signature material improvements.

Spare parts are delivered via phone, webshop, or VMI, with VMI being the stickiest

Gabler also advises on workshop setup, including test benches and pressure tanks, and equips naval maintenance facilities with its own specialist tooling. Once a navy’s workshops run on Gabler equipment and its technicians are Gabler-trained, switching suppliers means replacing every tool and retraining every person.

At end-of-life, Gabler dismounts and refurbishes mast systems and components, feeding them back into spare-part inventories for use elsewhere in the fleet.

After-sales revenue per mast over 30 years can be multiples of the original newbuild price. This is the highest-margin revenue stream in the business.

35% of Gabler's €89.8M fixed order backlog is attributable to service and maintenance contracts.

7. Gabler’s customers

This is an extremely high-barrier to entry business. Meaning, not just any company can do business with Gabler Group (or the other way around).

Submarines operate in an incredibly unforgiving environment. Components must survive extreme hydrostatic pressure, saltwater corrosion, and severe shocks. A submarine's only real defense is stealth.

If one of the mechanism is even slightly noisy, leaks, or fails to retract smoothly, it gives away the position of the submarine. Navies simply do not take chances on unproven tech and companies with unproved track records.

Getting a new component certified requires years of testing and big chunks upfront capital.

Manufacturers have to prove acoustic silencing, minimal radar and optical signatures, and foolproof fail-safes. All of this has to be funded through R&D, way ahead of when the actual revenue comes in.

It’s simple: you can’t land contracts if you don’t have a track record. And you can’t built a track record if you don’t land contracts.

With Gabler’s 60 years of experience, they can luckily do both.

They have a client base of just over 250 different entities. At the sovereign military level, right now more than 25 navies worldwide rely on Gabler products.

Gabler’s equipment is installed and operational on an estimated 185 to 200 submarines worldwide.

The most important customers for Gabler are the shipyards and prime defense contractors. They’ve built long relationships with big names like:

• Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems (tkMS) (German)

• L3Harris/Calzone (Italy/US)

• Hanwha Ocean (South Korea)

• SAAB Kockums (Sweden)

• Fincantieri (Italy)

• STM (Turkey)

What’s important for these manufacturers: guarantees. They spend millions of dollars on the systems. In return, they expect the company they buy them from to still be around in a few decades to provide spare parts, maintenance, and mid-life upgrades.

Gabler group can offer just that: reliability and and trustworthiness.

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8. Competitors

While Gabler’s products are quite unique, they are not the only ones making them. We’ll briefly take a look at the competitors in the landscape. To do this, we’ll divide the business in two segments; Submarine Masts and Subsea Power & Data.

Competitors for the core segment, the masts:

8.1. L3Harris

Specifically through their Calzoni division, which they acquired in 2012. Calzoni actually started making masts in 1960, so they have a lot of experience.

Their flagship technology is the E-HOIST system. Instead of using traditional hydraulics to raise and lower the mast, E-HOIST is fully electric.

While they do the same, they have different customers targets and address different segments. L3Harris is heavily entrenched with the U.S. Navy and its allies, while Gabler has a strong focus on the more conventional submarine market (Diesel & air-independent propulsion).

Simply put: do you see a US submarine, it’s likely a mast from L3harris. See a European one? High likelihood that it’s Gabler’s.

8.2. MacTaggert

Then we have a smaller player; MacTaggert. They focus primarily on the Uk. MacTaggart is a privately owned Scottish marine engineering firm that specializes in naval handling systems, including weapons elevators, helicopter handling gear, and submarine masts.

Their flagship submarine product is the Quiet Modular Mast (QMM). The QMM uses advanced composite materials (carbon and glass fiber), is hydro-dynamically profiled to minimize drag and vibration, and is powered in both directions rather than relying on gravity to retract

8.3 Some other interesting names to keep in mind - Safran + Thales + Hensoldt

Safran makes the optronics, thermal imagers, the low-light cameras, the laser rangefinders, and the radar interceptors that sit on top of the masts. Their systems are the standard for the French submarines including the nuclear Suffren-class and the widely exported conventional Scorpène-class.

They are however expanding outside of France, recently winning contracts for Canada's Victoria-class modernization, the Dutch Orka-class, and the Swedish A26.

But, they are not a direct competitor to Gabler, they are overwhelmingly complementary. Most of the time a shipyard will buy a universal hoistable mast from Gabler and integrate a Safran sensor package right on top of it.

Then we have Thales. Thales focusses mostly on the UK and France, and they been the sole supplier of visual systems for the UK Royal Navy for over a century. They build the CM0X0 family of optronics masts, used heavily on British and Japanese submarines.

Hensoldt holds the legacy of Carl Zeiss submarine optics. They build the SERO family of periscopes (which maintain a traditional direct-view optical channel alongside digital sensors) and the OMS series of ultra-low profile optronic masts.

Again, just like Safran they are complementary to Gabler than anything else. In many submarine builds, especially German TKMS boats, you will find a Hensoldt sensor head sitting right on top of a Gabler hoist. They partner constantly.

Thales and Hensoldt act as prime contractors, Gabler just sits one step further back in the supply chain.

8.4 Competitors for Subsea Power & Data segment

First, the most obvious one: Teledyne. Because Teledyne is so damn big, they are the baseline competitor for almost everyone in this segment/sector.

Teledyne actually has three segments in their business that overlap directly with the businesses within Gabler’s Subsea Power and Data segment.

• Vs. Develogic: Teledyne Benthos, which is mostly known for their modems, subsea releases, and underwater telemetry.

• Vs. SubCtech: Teledyne Energy Systems builds high-end pressure-tolerant batteries and fuel cells for ROVs and subsea infrastructure.

• Vs. North.io: Teledyne CARIS makes hydrographic mapping software and cloud platforms for processing multibeam sonar data.

Then we have Kraken Robotics, which is named as a direct competitor to SubCtech in Gabler’s prospectus. But in my opinion, unrightfully so. Yes, they do both make subsea batteries for AUVs and ROVs.

However, Develogic transmits acoustic data between underwater nodes; Kraken's synthetic aperture sonar takes high-resolution pictures of the seabed. One moves information, the other captures it.

Different problems, different procurement teams, different budget lines.

On batteries, the overlap looks closer, but it’s still not a -to-one. Kraken's SeaPower uses pressure-tolerant polymer encapsulation, and is built for defense AUVs where every gram counts, and they effectively own that market.

SubCtech uses 1-atmosphere titanium housings, which are a lot heavier and designed to sit on the ocean for 25 years+.

That’s not the same. It’s a different product, solving a different problem.

Sonardyne built acoustic modems in the same way Develogic does. Both sell into navy, offshore energy, and research. The products also have the same use cases. They do however have a different focus. Sonardyne built its reputation in AUV/ROV positioning and O&G well monitoring. Develogic is more oriented toward defense-grade submarine communication networks and oceanographic observatories. Product competitor, but slightly different approach.

Last but not least, Verlume. Verlume overlaps with SubCtech on the fixed subsea infrastructure power side. Verlume delivers subsea power systems to O&G companies offshore wind, monitoring and defence markets, so the same addressable markets as SubCtech.

Funnily enough, Verlume and Kraken Robotics have established a strategic collaboration combining Verlume's Axonn energy management technology with Kraken's SeaPower batteries. That partnership is now building a more complete offering that competes more directly with SubCtech's full stack offering.

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Paid subscribers get access to: all my buys/sells, all of my portfolio updates, access to the private section of my discord, exclusive content, my investment library and my full access to all deep dives and articles.

In the last section I cover:

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• Financials

• Valuation

• My plan and approach

9. Near-term catalysts

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Behind the scenes I’ve been working on adding some extra features for the subscribers in the paid tier.

Starting today, as a paid subscriber you can now direct access to my:

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The watchlists look like this:

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This will be a weekly series in which I will cover a broad spectrum of investing-related topics.

The goal is straightforward: to educate both myself and you, the reader, and ultimately helping us become more balanced and educated investors.

Below is a list of articles I published in this series thus far.

1. How to Start Investing

2. The Best Investment Research Tools

3. How to use the P/E Ratio

4. The January Effect

Today’s topic: Dollar Cost Averaging; what it is, and how to use it.

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Dollar Cost Averaging

The investor's chief problem, and even his worst enemy, is likely to be himself - Ben Graham

It might be a hard fact to accept, but you, yourself, are you worst enemy when it comes to investment returns.

Emotions, overconfidence, lack of self-reflection and FOMO will hurt your returns in the long run.

Therefore you have to go out of your way, to control your emotions.

OR, limit the amount of decisions to make in which your emotions play a role.

And this is where Dollar Cost Averaging comes in.

Dollar cost averaging (DCA) is a passive investment strategy where you invest a fixed dollar amount into a specific investment at regular intervals, regardless of share price.

Basically, you cut out the need to make a decision on:

• When to buy

• When to sell

• Which amount you want to invest (you only do this once).

The most common way DCA is used is in combination with ETFs. As this also mitigates the decision-making for which stock to pick. It’s also a viable strategy for building a position in a company you like, but don’t really know when to buy it exactly.

For those who don’t not know:

An ETF is exchange-traded fund. Basically a basket of stocks, bonds or commodities.

DCAing into an ETF is a great option if you are just starting as an investor, or if you want to cut out yet another decision you have to make: which stock to invest in.

Some popular ETF options that are often used for DCA’ing:

All-world ETFs —> world-wide + sector diversification
S&P500 ETFs —> focus on US large caps, indirect worldwide exposure
Nasdaq ETFs —> Focus on US tech companies, also indirect worldwide exposure

You can also pick some sector-specific ETFs, but they usually provide more volatility and it still forces you to ‘‘pick the right’’ ETF.

The great thing: when an index updates its list, the ETF manager automatically buys and sells shares to match the new lineup. So, the index sort of does the balancing for you.

So how does DCA’ing work? It’s easiest explained with an example:

Let’s say:

• You have $750 dollars to invest each month

• You want to keep investing for a long period (let’s say at least 10 years)

• You want to invest in the SPY (S&P500 ETF) - or any other ETF

Every month, REGARDLESS of what the price does, You invest $750 in the SPY ETF.

Does the price of the ETF fall to $400? You buy.

Does it rise to $800? You buy.

Does it go to $2000. You buy.

Preferably, you pick 1 specific date and time (let’s say the first day of the month at 10:00 AM), and WHATEVER happens, you put the money in.

No timing.

No emotion.

A predetermined plan being executed.

The most important part: STICK TO THE PLAN.

I often see questions like: I’m using a DCA strategy but now the price has risen so much, do I keep buying?

If they ask such a question, they are not DCA'ing. They are still timing the market.

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The easy part about the DCA: you do this EVERY MONTH (or any other timeframe).

Note: in this example you invest $750 buck, but the ETF is $634. You have $100 left. Most ETFs have lower dollar amounts needed to invest, so your investment would easier fit. In this specific case. Just buy one share of the ETF, and save up the remaining cash each month until you can buy one extra share

By executing the DCA strategy: You ignore and cut out the noise.

You avoid chasing hype and gains.

You can ignore all financials news that would normally impact your decisions.

In my opinion, this is the best strategy for new investors that want to have exposure to the stock market, but don’t want to keep reading news about stocks and the stock market all day, every day.

Is it PERFECT? No, not at all.

Looking purely at investment returns, it’s better to do lump-sum. Which is: investing all capital at once, at the start of you investing journey (of course, you have to have an initial starting amount here).

Lump-sum investing historically outperforms dollar-cost averaging (DCA) roughly 67-70% of the time, providing higher returns, simply due to longer market exposure.

The difference is not particularly big though, as you can see in the picture below.

DCA does however lower the risk of investing a large sum immediately before a market downturn.

But, you never know when it might happen.

And that’s exactly the type of decision we want to avoid making or guessing, by using the DCA strategy.

As mentioned before, you can also apply the DCA when you want to built a position in a stock.

The same process applies, but in this case you do not buy an ETF, but shares of a company you like. Keep in mind that you have to quite a bit of capital do do such a strategy, as some share prices are quite high (I don’t mean valuation, but dollar amount). If you want to apply such a strategy at a stock that has a high share price, but you don’t have the cash —> Check if your broker does fractional shares.

Some brokerages even offer automatic, recurring investments to ensure you are buying consistently.

That’s a great way of making sure you execute your plan.

Just set the automatic recurring investment, and forget about it.

So to sum it up: I believe dollar cost averaging is a great for beginning or inexperienced investors, that still want to have a consistent investing strategy, that eliminates one of your biggest enemies in investing: your own human emotions.

That’s it for now. See you next week!

Let me know what your thoughts are on DCA’ing! Is this a strategy you use and think is viable?

Cheers,

TacticzHazel

This newsletter is completely reader-supported. Do you enjoy my content and or/think it’s valuable? Considering become a free or paid subscriber. If you’re in a position to chip in for a paid tier, it directly funds the time that goes into this writing. Either way, thanks for being here.

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Disclaimer
The content I share is for educational and informational purposes only. It should not be considered financial, investment, or trading advice. All opinions expressed are personal views and are not guarantees of future performance. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of capital, and past results do not indicate future returns.

Before making any investment decisions, you should conduct your own research or seek guidance from a licensed financial advisor. I am not responsible for any financial outcomes resulting from actions taken based on the information provided.

By engaging with this content, you acknowledge and agree that you are solely responsible for your own investment choices.

I had to rewrite this first section, as markets completely flipped today.

As you are all aware, March was volatile. The Iran conflict certainly being the main driver. All eyes on Trump this month.

Nobody cares about macro news and stock performance.

Unfortunately, all we do is watch Trump’s updates.

Just like the broader market, my portfolio initially took a hit this month.

However, I am very pleased with the overall resilience so far this year.

My YTD as of March is -4.69%.

Since inception (01-01-2023) my portfolio is up 97% (compared to 70% for the SP500), which means a ≈26.01% CAGR.

For comparison, the VUSA (SP500 in Euros), which is a more fair comparison did 53.4% in the same period, so that’s almost a 2x.

Adjusting for currency headwinds my portfolio would be up 111%.

Note: I actually made a calculation error in my earlier portfolio updates, which led to miscalculation of total returns. This is fixed now.

Below is a comparison vs the dollar nominated S&P500 and the VWRL ETF. I will recalculate this next month to include the VUSA instead of the dollar-nominated S&P500 so the comparison is more fair. The Allworld ETF is euro-nominated already.

Even in this tough market environment, the portfolio is holding up well. The diversification and selection of stocks is working and I’m pleased with it’s performance.

I see a lot of YTDs of portfolio’s being down anywhere between 20% and 40%, mostly from investors taking on way too much risk. That’s certainly not what is happening to my portfolio. It was also built to exactly not do that.

Some of my holdings are struggling as well, don’t get me wrong. But all of them are high quality, and all of them have a bright future.

The only thing that did change: sentiment and price. And we all know these are the worst measures of how well a stock or company does.

Every month I will give insight into how my portfolio has done that month. In these updates I will provide information on:

• What my portfolio looks like (holdings + cost basis)

• Performance (vs. benchmarks)

• All my buys and sells

• Sentiment list + a short update for all my holdings and watch-list

Portfolio updates and real-time updates on when I buy and sell companies are exclusive to paid subscribers.

Paid subscribers get: full access to my deep-dives, real-time buy and sell notifications, all my portfolio updates, access to the private section of my discord, and lot’s of other exclusive content.

I’m planning to raise my prices at some point this year as the newsletter grows and the amount of content and value continues to increase.

If you subscribe now, you keep the discounted rate, even after the raise.

Subscribe now

Read more

I've been thinking for a while now about how to create a bit more structure for myself and how I want to move forward with this newsletter.

Not just in terms of content and scheduling, but also what I want to offer my subscribers.

What was lacking: a clear plan. A clear overview of my content. What do I actually do here?

I want to focus on quality and consitency, not quantity.

I’m a long-term investor, and that’s also how I will treat this newsletter.

After giving it some thought this is what my plan for the remainder of 2026 looks like.

Here is what I will offer to:

Free subscribers

1. My new series: ‘‘Investing explained’’ —> Weekly article (Wednesday)

2. My new series: ‘‘Photonics Explained’’ —> Monthly article

3. Other investing related content like earnings reviews and general thoughts on the market and stocks —> whenever I see the need

4. Partial access to my deep dives and investment theses —> At least once per month

5. Access to free section of the discord

For paid subscribers

1. Full access to all my deep dives and/ or Investments theses —> At least once per month

2. Elaborate Portfolio Update —> Monthly

3. Updates and explanation on all my buys and sells —> Whenever I make the transactions

4. Access to my Portfolio tracker + Sentiment list + Watchlist (updated weekly and coming soon*)

5. Access to my valuation models (coming soon*)

6. Access to my DCF-template + LLM Research prompts to get a quick overview of a company (coming soon*)

7. Paid section access in discord + ask me anything

   ---

*Coming soon means probably next week. The Google Drive is set up, I’m still looking for the right way to share it with everyone.

So this means you can expect about 2 articles per week!

I really want my subscribers to grow alongside me. Both with becoming a better investor, but also in outperforming the market in the long run.

Short-term subscriptions don't align with that goal.

It puts us on different timelines. I want to build something sustainable, without feeling pressured to make forced trades or constantly meet the short-term expectations of a monthly turnover.

That’s why I’m raising the monthly subscription price from €23 to €35 per month. , from the 1^st of April onwards. This is not a joke. :D

The annual subscription price will remain unchanged for now. I will raise the price later this year to better reflect the depth of my research and articles.

If you upgrade now, your price is locked for forever.

Subscribe now

I would love to hear your thoughts on the above! Do you like this new ‘‘schedule’’ and did it help to clear up what I’m trying to do here?

Also, is there anything you’d like to see add to the newsletter?

Anyways, thanks for reading!

Cheers,

TacticzHazel

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PS: Thinking of upgrading to paid? A quick tip: upgrading inside the Substack app means Apple or Google takes a 30% cut. To skip the app store fees and support this work directly always use the web-browser.

STIF dropped about about 20% after releasing 2025 numbers yesterday.

In this article I will give you my updated valuation models plus I will tell you what I’m doing with the position.

If you haven’t yet, I would highly recommend checking out my investment thesis here:

Even though in my opinion not much new was added in the 2025 report that was published yesterday there were some broader concerns I’d like to highlight.

Top-line growth was still strong 47.8%, but profitability is taking a hit. The gross margin dropped from 64.7% in 2024 to 63.0% in 2025.

Also, the EBITDA margin shrank from 25.6% down to 22.7%. Starting to fall in line already with management’s 2030 targets.

Net profit came in at €11.8M, but the market had higher expectations. So I believe that is the main reason for the drawdown. A big hit on profitability is not something the market likes to see.

STIF bought revenue growth through the STUVEX and BOSS PRODUCTS acquisitions.

Management explicitly stated that these new acquisitions have operating profitability levels below the Group’s historical standards.

Funding these acquisitions pushed net debt to €24.3m. Because of this, their financial expenses went from €0.2M in 2024 to a €1.8M drag on earnings in 2025.

Management reaffirmed long-term goal of €200M by 2030 and EBITDA margins of 20%.

So, let’s use all the new information we have into the valuation models. I will give you my bear/base/bull case and end with a weighted average CAGR.

In the bear case, with very conservative assumptions we get a -3.28% CAGR

Read more

STIF dropped about about 20% after releasing 2025 numbers yesterday.

In this article I will give you my updated valuation models plus I will tell you what I’m doing with the position.

If you haven’t yet, I would higly recommend checking out my investment thesis here:

Even though in my opinion not much new was added in the 2025 report that was published yesterday there were some broader concerns I’d like to highlight.

Top-line growth was still strong 47.8%, but profitability is taking a hit. The gross margin dropped from 64.7% in 2024 to 63.0% in 2025.

Also, the EBITDA margin shrank from 25.6% down to 22.7%. Starting to fall in line already with management’s 2030 targets.

Net profit came in at €11.8M, but the market had higher expectations. So I believe that is the main reason for the drawdown. A big hit on profitability is not something the market likes to see.

STIF bought revenue growth through the STUVEX and BOSS PRODUCTS acquisitions.

Management explicitly stated that these new acquisitions have operating profitability levels below the Group's historical standards.

Funding these acquisitions pushed net debt to €24.3m. Because of this, their financial expenses went from €0.2M in 2024 to a €1.8M drag on earnings in 2025.

Management reaffirmed long-term goal of €200M by 2030 and EBITDA margins of 20%.

So, let’s use all the new information we have into the valuation models. I will give you my bear/base/bull case and end with a weighted average CAGR.

In the bear case, with very conservative assumptions we get a -3.28% CAGR

Read more

But then I realized, I’m an idiot. I really like doing this.

I like researching, I like writing and I like connecting with people in this community.

I had a chat with my wife, and she said: go for it.

So, instead of quitting, I doubled down.

Now, I do even more research than before.

I write more articles. I try to connect with as many people as I can.

And I mostly do it when the family is sleeping. And trust me, that’s not always easy as I really like sleeping.

For those who don’t know: I’m doing this on the side. As a side-project. Hoping to one day turn it into something more permanent.

Simultaneously taking care of my young little man (which I’m incredibly proud of) and spending time with the wife.

I also work a day-time job and love spending time with family and friends. I exercise and I have a million other hobbies.

So while the newsletter is not my main priority, it is a new-found passion.

And I will continue dedicating my time to it. As much as I can. For you, and for myself.

So, in 2026 I increased my effort. I hope it reflects and it’s noticeable. Both in quantity and quality.

The Newsletter going forward

The thing that I still struggled with: doing it in a clear and uncluttered way.

So, it was time to change that.

Here’s what the newsletter will look like going forward.

1. The Main focus of the channel is and will be: Deep Dives and Investment Theses.
   Besides covering the usual suspects in my portfolio, I will also try to spend more time going through interesting small-cap and niche plays. The main sectors I will cover:
   - Tech, also neoclouds and photonics
   - Semiconductor companies
   - Defense
   - Healthcare (mostly GLP-1 companies)
   - Quality compounders.

But, If I see an interesting opportunity elsewhere, I will not hesitate to go in there.

From now on most of the deep dives will be (at least partially) paywalled.

2. Portfolio Updates and Buys and sells
   For now I will continue to do a monthly update, but I will likely transition to a quarterly update. I’m a long-term investor, so tracking monthly changes in the portfolio is kind of pointless to me.
   If people really want to see them, I will keep doing them on a monthly basis.

From now on all of the portfolio and trade updates will be paywalled.

3. Investing Explained Series:
   I’ve already been working it, but this will be a new series. In this series I will cover a wide range of topics related to investing. It will be mostly aimed at beginners, but I believe there is something to be learned for everyone.
   
   Here are some of the topics I already covered.

   This series will be totally free to read.

   ---

4. Photonics
   I will continue to do more research on photonics. I really like the sector, so expect more research on that. I think this is a great way to follow me on my journey in understanding the intricacies and meanwhile learning yourself as well.

The beginners guide can be found here:

This series will be totally free to read.

5. Earnings reviews
   I will stop posting earnings reviews. Instead I will share these in my discord and subscriber chat. Maybe I’ll sneak in one or two if I really think they deserve attention.

   The updates will be free to read

   ---

6. Behind the scenes
   I’m also working on setting up a drive with research material.
   In the drive you can find:

• - Valuation models

• - Live portfolio tracker + sentiment list + watchlist

• - A DCF model

• - Research prompts for LLM’s to help you improve research

This material will be for paid subs, and my plan is to keep expanding on it.

My X-account
As some of you may know, I have a decent following in X. I used to spend a lot of time on there. But since a couple weeks, I really cut down on my time on there. And it will stay like that.

I want to spend the free time I have left in doing research and writing articles. Not doom-scrolling and debating with everyone and their mom.

The Discord
I opened a discord this year, and over 300 people have joined! Great! It’s still not as active as I hoped it would be, but I like the option for people to interact with me there. Hopefully it will continue to grow into a bit more lively place someday.

If you want to join: Here is the link

Join the discord

Raising price for my paid plan
Since the quality and frequency of the newsletter is growing, I will increase my prices this year. Starting with the monthly price, which will be raised from the 1^st of April onwards.

It will be raised from €23 to €35. Partially to better reflect the time and effort I put in, but also because I prefer my subs to take the yearly plan.

All of the work I do is for the long-term. So short-term plans don’t fit with what I’m trying to do here.

I don’t want to feel rushed to put out content or do trades, to please people that take the monthly plan. I know they probably don’t expect me to do it, but for me it feels that way.

Later this year I will also increase the annual price, but for now it will remain unchanged. More on that later.

Subscribe now

So to summarize it all:

• Main priority: Deep dives and investment theses (Mostly paid)

• Portfolio updates + trade updates (fully paid)

• Two series: Investing explained and Photonics Explained

• Will stop with (most) earnings reviews

• Working on a Google Drive with research material and a portfolio tracker (fully paid)

• Less time on X

• Slowly building the discord.

• Monthly plan will be raised April 1st. Later this year, annual plan will be raised

I’m excited! I hope you are too!

If you have any feedback for me, bad or good. I would love to hear from you.

Cheers, TacticzHazel

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