Further updates on Q1 2026 results.

All Newsletters18 May 2026

The Equity Market looking forward

Some further great work from Yardeni Research:

As we keep saying, we need a resolution to the re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz.

Growth equities tend to underperform when long bond yields rise and that is exactly what we are getting on inflation fears from rising Oil prices. This needs to be resolved, or Markets will falter. The FT puts it well in a recent article by Malcolm Moore, Fresh crunch point looms :

“Exactly when a crunch point might be reached is difficult to predict. Most oil reserves, over 3bn barrels, are held by oil companies, traders and refineries, but the majority of this “inventory” is part of the system. Pipelines require minimum volumes to maintain pressure, refineries need continuous supplies and storage tanks cannot be fully drained without risking damage. Markets would seize up well before inventories hit zero, said analysts. “The minimum operating level depends by country and by product,” said Paul Horsnell of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. JPMorgan estimates inventories among OECD countries could approach “operational stress levels” by early June.”

Although we note that others have guesstimated crunch points in July and August, the Market may well panic well before then. In addition, we expect some early signs of panic from the Federal Reserve minutes that will be released this week.

Pulling in the other direction, there is an old Market Adage that the Market will always go to the position that causes the most people, the most pain. This is called “the Pain Trade” and the direction has been up because many funds reduced exposure as the Iranian War started to drag on. The chart below shows that Bullish sentiment is low by comparison and hence this is exactly why the pain trade has been up because sentiment reflects positioning. However, our view is that the Bond Market is a stronger force that the Pain Trade. So, we need a resolution in weeks not months.

Assuming we get a resolution to the Strait of Hormuz issue, then the forward earnings set up is very attractive.

Again, the fastest earnings growth is being seen by the Larger Companies which reinforces our Thesis that the companies competing in the Era of Ai need scale. Smaller Capitalisation Technology funds have underperformed for the last three years and we think the chart below points to a repeat of that result.

Putting all this together, we can see how Bullish that Yardeni are for Markets going forward.

…and Dan Ives too…

MORE Q1 2026 Results round up for Portfolio Holdings

Arm Holdings Q4 FY2026 Earnings Call — Key Quotes

Haas on the platform shift: “As AI is moving from human-based queries to continuous agent-driven workloads. This shift is expanding the role of the CPU. These agentic workloads require CPUs to coordinate tasks, move data, manage memory, enforce security, and orchestrate work around accelerators.”
Haas on the TAM: “As Agentic AI scales, data centers will require more than 4 times today’s CPU capacity, creating a data center CPU market opportunity of more than $100 billion by 2030.“
Haas on the TAM upside: “Could the number be $120 billion out in that timeframe? Certainly. We are seeing literally, not only an explosion of CPU demand, but one of the areas that we’re seeing growth in terms of CPU is number of cores per CPU.”
Haas on undercalling demand: “I think one thing we know for sure is that we probably have undercalled the CPU demand in terms of the transition here. We talked about a 4X increase. We could get our heads around a bigger number than that.”
Haas on NVIDIA Vera: “At NVIDIA GTC, NVIDIA announced Vera, the next-generation Arm-based CPU built for Agentic AI, and building a standalone rack integrating 256 Vera CPUs.”
Haas on accelerator pairing: “NVIDIA, Amazon, and Google are already using Arm-based CPUs as head nodes along the accelerator-based systems. Cerebras, OpenAI, Rebellions, and Positron are doing the same with the Arm AGI CPU.”
Haas on competitive positioning: “I’m actually confident that by the end of the decade, I believe, the largest market share by CPU type will be Arm.”
Haas on the broader compute platform: “AI is moving to every device and every physical system. Phones, PCs, vehicles, factories, robots, cameras, sensors, and connected devices all need efficient secure compute with software that scales. These AI workloads will all run on Arm. With over 350 billion chips shipped and over 22 million developers, the Arm Compute Platform is the most comprehensive in history.”

IREN Ltd Q3 FY2026 Earnings Call — Key Quotes

Demand vs. Supply Dynamics

Roberts on contracted capacity: “All of our operational capacity is fully contracted. We are not chasing demand, we are racing to build supply fast enough to meet it. In this market, the moment compute comes online, it goes to work. That is the nature of the structural imbalance between AI infrastructure, supply and demand and it is why time to compute is the most important metric we track.”
Draper on capacity scarcity: “We are still seeing extremely strong levels of demand within the industry, certainly outstripping supply and what we continue to see as we move forward is that capacity becomes increasingly scarce further out than people were expecting… We’re already seeing that capacity available in ’27 is extremely scarce and that is continuing to push into ’28 now as well.” [Analysts will have to start moving up their 2028 Capex numbers soon].
Roberts on idle GPUs: “There are no idle GPUs and the prospect of them there being GPUs sitting there unused, given how structurally constrained this market is little over the near-term, but in the medium term, it’s not the focus.”

Build Plan & Roadmap

Roberts on 2026: “In 2026 we are targeting 480 megawatts of AI cloud capacity, 150,000 GPUs and $3.7 billion of ARR by year end.”
Roberts on 2027: “In 2027, we are scaling to 1,210 megawatts with an additional 730 megawatts currently under construction across British Columbia and Texas, including Childress and the initial phase at Sweetwater 1.” [So the next year 730MW v 480MW the year before => ultra growth!]
Roberts on the repeatable template: “Importantly, the model is repeatable. Horizon 1 establishes the build template. Each subsequent phase benefits from the same design, supply chain, construction sequencing, and site team.”

ARR & Customer Mix

Roberts on the NVIDIA introduction effect: “You don’t need a sales team in this market, particularly when you’ve got NVIDIA. They see the whole ecosystem, the introductions, the referrals, putting us in touch with anyone that needs capacity, it’s just happening so organically.”
Roberts on the customer evolution: “We do expect the customer mix to evolve over time. Hyperscalers, AI natives, enterprises, and on-demand use cases, but we do not need to force that outcome. The platform will attract the right customers as it continues to scale.” [Enterprise again!]

Capital Markets & Financing

Draper on financing template: “When you look at the GPU financing, which is the lion’s share of that CapEx, the Microsoft contract is a great template. We financed 95% of that CapEx at an average interest-rate of about 3% through prepayments and GPU financing. So the capital is out there as long as you sign good contracts and you show that you can execute and operate this capacity.” [3%!]

Older GPUs Still in Demand

Draper on full utilisation: “The comments that we made about no idle GPUs that applies to all GPUs, not just latest generation. So yeah, older generations, A100s, H100s, H200s, all fully effectively fully utilized across the industry. So the demand picture continues to be strong in some instances where you’re actually seeing our pricing for older generation units climbing significantly.” [Yet the Press predicted they would all be scrapped by now].

Key Quotes from CoreWeave Q1 2026 Earnings Call (May 7, 2026)

On the Quarter’s Headline Results (Mike Intrator, CEO)

“Q1 was a transformational quarter for CoreWeave. We delivered our strongest quarter for customer bookings, signing more than $40 billion of new commitments and growing contracted revenue backlog to nearly $100 billion.”
“We generated approximately $2.1 billion of revenue, up 32% quarter-over-quarter and 112% year-over-year, and surpassed 1 gigawatt of active power.“

On Demand Environment

“AI diffusion is accelerating and our addressable market, customer base, and platform are all expanding rapidly.”
“The constraint in AI is no longer whether enterprises and AI labs want to deploy. It is how quickly high performance, reliable AI cloud capacity can be delivered.”
“The world’s four pre-eminent AI model developers now rely on CoreWeave Cloud, as do nine of the 10 AI leaders outside of China.”
“Today, we have 10 customers committed to spending at least $1 billion with CoreWeave.”

On Customer Wins / Diversification

“This vertical [financial services] is already approaching $10 billion in our revenue backlog, driven by expanded commitments from existing partners like Jane Street, who added $6 billion of capacity in Q1.” [Specific Enterprise verticals like Finance are growing fast].
“Physical AI and spatial computing has also surpassed $1 billion in revenue backlog contributions… Recent new customers include WorldLabs, PhysicsX and Sunday Robotics.” [New model type companies growing fast too].

On Inference and GPU Demand

“Inference is the monetization of AI and its acceleration is driving real-world productivity gains that are justifying increased investment and broader enterprise adoption.”
“Average pricing for the A100s, H100s, H200s and L40s all increased quarter-over-quarter and we remain largely sold out for near-term capacity across our fleet.”
“We are sold out in our H100s. We are sold out in our A100s. We are seeing price appreciation as more inference is coming in.”

On Financing (Mike Intrator and Nitin Agrawal, CFO)

“This is the first ever investment grade delayed draw term loan backed by HPC infrastructure, achieving an A- equivalent rating from Moody’s, Fitch and DBRS.”
“We have already reduced our weighted average cost of debt by approximately 600 basis points from 2023 to 2025… we have further compressed our weighted average cost of debt by approximately 80 basis points year-to-date.”
“More than $20 billion of debt and equity capital secured year-to-date.”

On Margin Trajectory (Nitin Agrawal, CFO)

“This margin dynamic is timing based, not economic.”
“By month three, however, we are typically generating revenue with contribution margins normalizing in the mid-20s.” [MONTH 3!]

On Financial Results & Guidance

“Adjusted EBITDA for Q1 was $1.2 billion compared to $606 million in Q1 of 2025, growing 91% year-over-year. Our adjusted EBITDA margin was 56%.”
“Revenue backlog for the quarter ended at $99.4 billion, up nearly 50% sequentially and close to 4x year-over-year.”

Guidance & Growth Profile

Full Year: Reaffirmed “$12 billion to $13 billion of revenue and $900 million to $1.1 billion of adjusted operating income.”
“We now expect to end 2026 with $18 billion to $19 billion of annualized run-rate revenue.”
“We continue to expect to grow annualized run rate revenue to more than $30 billion as we exit 2027. More than 75% of which is already contracted.”

On “Allocation” vs. Selling

“It’s unusual to be in a business where the demand for your product is so high that you get to really be thoughtful about which clients you want to bring on to your infrastructure.”
“The limiting factor isn’t just power, it’s labor, it’s memory, it’s storage, it’s our ability to bring up infrastructure.”

Conclusions on the Results round up so far

Note that we do not own ARM (we do own CRWV and IREN) but we hope that all the commentary above exhibits why we believe we have a highly exciting, huge opportunity, ultra growth portfolio. Combine that Portfolio with a potentially improving Equity Markets, and an Era of Ai which is entering an exponential growth period, and the result is a very compelling position.

Calendar 2026 YTD NAV Total return…over 28%…

Our Since Inception annualised remains over 19 per cent in NAV Total return terms…

Key Manchester & London Updates

Please remember that all Fund based news is now posted to: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mnl-ln

Twitter will only see posts on Ai, Technology and the global Economy.

Key Tweets of the Month

We now have some videos to show you – please click the images below to watch.

If ever you wanted evidence that the old school, “paid for” pod or videocast OR “pay to speak” conference was dead then its demonstrated here. These avatar video productions cost us very little in Token Costs and, as I write this, have an aggregate of 3m views across the UK across multiple platforms. As any advertiser will tell you, it requires a campaign to convert watchers to consumers so we will continue to produce such content.

Click this image to read the article shown below: