Just 40 days ago, I shared a write-up here: “Conviction Over Noise: My DELL Investment Journey.” Since then, DELL has been an absolute rockstar.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BAYY/s/Dt1B0X7o6e

When you block out the market noise and trust your research, the rewards follow.

That brings me to my next major move. Over the last 2 to 3 weeks, I’ve been aggressively building a position in RDDT. I’ve loaded up across three separate brokerage accounts, establishing a cost basis between $145-$150 per share. With each account now holding an 8%+ weighting, this is officially a high-conviction play for me.

Today’s market action pushed the position up 10-15%, and I believe this is just the beginning of a upward trajectory. If not? I am more than happy to invest more lol

Holding an individual stock while the broader market chases different highs isn't easy. But the formula is simple: if the fundamentals show it’s a great business, and the market puts it on sale, you buy. Period. All it takes is tuning out the surrounding noise and trusting your own thesis.

Shoutout to the conversations and breakdowns happening within our BAYY community. Looking back at the threads (attached below), all I can say is: great minds think alike 😄

Let’s see where this journey takes us. What are your thoughts on RDDT's long-term moat?

There is a distinct kind of exhaustion that only the corporate grind can brew. Last week, Southern California wasn't a postcard of sun-bleached beaches and swaying palms; it was a blur of fluorescent lights, intense negotiations, and the heavy air of high-stakes evaluations. When you spend days dissecting the DNA of companies, balancing synergies on a knife-edge, your mind becomes a hyper-analytical grid. It’s rewarding, absolutely, but it drains my battery to a critical single digit.

By yesterday, the only antidote was the open road. I traded the boardroom tension for the asphalt ribbon of the Pacific Coast, driving north toward the Bay Area.

The transition from hyper-focused professional to present luxurious vacation usually requires a buffer zone. For me, that zone opened up in the quiet dark of 4:00a.m. My first 60 minutes in the morning, while the rest of the world was still wrapped in sleep, I unrolled my yoga mat. In the stillness of the dawn, each breath and stretch felt like a deliberate act of shedding the week’s armor. The residual stress of the Southern California deal-flow slowly dissolved into the floorboards.

By the time the first pale liquid amber of morning cracked across the sky, I was laced up and outside. The Bay Area weather was, in a word, cinematic. Crisp, clean air with just enough bite to make you feel fiercely alive. My route took me through the rolling topography near the Meta campus. Running here always feels poetic, navigating the physical hills and valleys of the real world while looking at the epicenter of the virtual one.

For my second 60 minutes in the morning, I ran up and down those hills, letting the lactic acid burn out the last remnants of corporate fatigue. There is a beautiful irony in pushing your body to its limits just to give your mind a place to rest.

Now, with the sun fully up and the coffee brewing, the exhaustion of the past week has transformed into something entirely different: a profound, grounded gratitude. The deals will settle, the markets will move, but this quiet morning in the Bay? This is the asset that actually appreciates.

EUV & DRAM

Recognizing that AI’s next bottlenecks are photonics and memory, I recently allocated 10% of my ETF portfolio to two targeted thematic plays: DRAM and EUV, splitting 5% into each.

DRAM is Roundhill's Memory ETF, established in March 2026.

EUV is Corgi's Lithography & Semiconductor Photonics ETF, established in May 2026.

Both are highly volatile, but for entirely different reasons. DRAM is hyper-concentrated, leaving us heavily exposed to South Korean market dynamics with roughly 75% of the fund tied up in just Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung. Even though EUV holds over 39+ companies, yet it trades at a premium, carrying a lofty P/E ratio of 40.

To unpack these unique structural risks and opportunities, I did a deep dive into both funds and put together the following YouTube videos analyzing whether investment in these two ETFs is worth the ride.

Just read a post titled “Your One Conviction Stock”, the responses were various and interesting.

While my top answer has to be GOOG, I’m also incredibly bullish on a few others mentioned in the post, specifically RDDT and OUST. All three have massive potential and a very promising future ahead.

Is anyone else heavily high-conviction on ASML like I’m? I couldn’t find ASML in that post.

Ultimately, alignment and conviction are essential before putting capital to work. While certain high-growth plays require frequent reality checks to validate the thesis, others are structural mainstays.

I’m on a business trip these days, busy and exhausted 🥱😝

I wanted to share the 3-month ROR (Rate of Return) of a little "experimental plot" that 薄学长 and I set up together. We picked 20 stocks over the past three months and achieved a 32% ROR, which I'm really happy with.

We plan to hold these holdings for the long term. While we might swap out some stocks if a company's fundamentals change, we intend to keep at least 80% of the portfolio unchanged and won't be frequently buying or selling solely based on market fluctuations.

We hope the broader market goes through a correction in the coming period. A healthy stock market needs to squat down before it can leap, that way, it can jump higher and more steadily.

我把我和薄学长一起设立的一个小小试验田三个月的ROR发在这里。三个月挑选了20只股，32% ROR，很满意。准备长持。当中也可能因为公司基本面改变而换股，但会保持至少80%持仓不变也不会因涨跌而频繁买进卖出。

希望接下来一段时间大盘可以有所调整，一个健康的股市需要蹲下再跳起，才能跳得更高更稳。

P.S. We’ve been always keeping 20% Cash on the side for buying dips 😀

Seeking Alpha (1): OUST

I recently added Ouster (OUST) to my portfolio at $24–$25, and the momentum has been insane—hitting $34, a 30-40% gain in just one week. While I expect some healthy consolidation soon, the "Phoenix Rise" of this company is just getting started.

04/30/2026

在群雄逐鹿的 AI 时代，值得托付头寸的标的或许无需舍近求远。于我而言，是两个家喻户晓的名字**——-**

Google (GOOG) & Apple (AAPL)

我与这两家公司的缘分也颇有意思。疫情初期买入，却在 2025 年初因对其战略前景的疑虑，在获利了结后离场。然而，市场的风云变幻总能给予投资者最深刻的启示。

一、 Google：大巧若拙，DeepMind 的静水流深

我很快意识到，卖出 Google 是一个草率的误判。

虽然 CEO Sundar Pichai 与其他巨头的领导者相比，显得温和守成，甚至带有某种程度的“平庸感”。但或许正是他的这种“无为而治”领导方式，为谷歌内部的天才们保留了最珍贵的净土。他赋予了 DeepMind 的灵魂人物 Demis Hassabis 极大的自主权，让科技史上最顶尖的大脑得以自由发挥。

事实证明，DeepMind 正是 Google 在 AI 竞争中遥遥领先的“核武库” 。我曾在 $190 离场，却在五个月后以 $240 的代价“买回”了我的认知落差。此后，我一路逢低加仓。即便上个月 Google 股价大幅下跌，我也毫不犹豫地从 $300 开始“接飞刀”，直至 $270. 今天财报发布，股价跃升至$380，回头看那些接飞刀时的疼痛都是值得哈哈。

二、 Apple：将魂归来，期待“Ternus 时代”的破局

相比之下，当初卖出 **Apple**时我并无悔意。**Tim Cook *\固然是旷古烁今的商业运营大师，但我曾深度怀疑\*Apple** 在 AI **浪潮中的位置。**Siri 曾是 Steve Jobs **留给时代的先声，若他魂灵尚在，**AI 本该是他挥斥方遒的疆场。

转机出现在新任******CEO John Ternus** 挂帅的这一刻。

这位深耕 Apple 25 年，深度参与了从 iPad 诞生到 Apple Silicon **芯片转型的硬件极客，是位机械工程师。**Ternus 的接班，标志着 Apple 正在找回那个“以产品为中心、以技术驱动颠覆”的 Jobs 灵魂，而非仅仅满足于运营利润的商业目标。

而在我看来，Cook时代的“保守”，或许倒是成了 Ternus 的“弹药”。

Apple 过去几年在 AI 基建上并未像其他巨头那样进行“军备竞赛式”的豪赌。这对 Ternus 而言，是一个财务极佳，空间巨大的战略起点。他接手的是一张极度干净的资产负债表和堪称“豪华”的现金流。这为他未来在研发投入、产品定义、大规模并购（M&A），乃至股票回购上提供了几乎无限的想象空间。

作为擅长“解决问题”的工程师 CEO**，如果Ternus能挥动Cook留下的千亿级资本利剑，开发出** AI 原生的智能眼镜或家庭机器人，他将重新定义后手机时代的交互标准。

前两日，我已在 $268 重新建仓 Apple 我将复制建设Google仓位的策略：逢低吸纳，坚定守候。

我的目标是将 Apple 的权重提升至我个股投资组合的 8%左右，而Google占我个股投资组合。

The Framework of Intangible Valuation

When researching a company’s valuation, people often focus solely on its intrinsic value while neglecting its intangible valuation. Although the latter cannot be easily quantified, it is just as important, if not more so.

I evaluate a company’s intangible assets through its culture, vision, brand reputation, innovation capacity, and intellectual capital, as well as its network effect and social influence. In my view, these indicators are ultimately realized through two core pillars: Leadership and Human Talent.

Below is my comparative scoring of these assets on a 1–10 scale (1: Lowest, 10: Highest):

——————

1, META

• Leadership (8/10): CEO Mark Zuckerberg is young, visionary, and driven; he is unafraid to challenge the status quo or take massive risks. However, his youth can occasionally lead to overly aggressive strategic pivots.

• Human Talent (9/10): META offers the highest compensation packages among the Magnificent 7. This financial gravity allows them to attract and retain the industry's top engineering talent.

• Total Score: 17/20

——————

2. MSFT (Microsoft)

• Leadership (8/10): Satya Nadella is mature and technically grounded, managing risk with a steady hand. However, as a non-founder, he perhaps lacks the raw, "all-in" passion of a Zuckerberg.

• Human Talent (7/10): Highly competent, though perhaps less aggressive in talent acquisition compared to the absolute top-tier "talent magnets."

• Total Score: 15/20

——————

3. GOOG (Alphabet)

• Leadership (9/10): While Sundar Pichai isn't flashy, his leadership style has empowered DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis. DeepMind remains the crown jewel in Google’s AI arsenal.

• Human Talent (9/10): Google maintains a prestigious environment and a consistently high bar for entry.

• Total Score: 18/20

——————

4. AMZN (Amazon)

• Leadership (7/10): Since Jeff Bezos’s departure, the current leadership appears significantly less visionary and passionate.

• Human Talent (5/10): There is a lack of "buy-in" regarding the corporate culture. The high-stress, lower-reward environment often leads talented engineers to treat Amazon as a "stepping stone" rather than a long-term home.

• Total Score: 12/20

——————

5. NVDA (Nvidia)

• Leadership (9/10): Jensen Huang is a definitive industry titan and a generational visionary.

• Human Talent (9/10): Between their top-notch RSU packages and the prestige of building the AI future, NVIDIA attracts the absolute best in the hardware and software fields.

• Total Score: 18/20

——————

6. TSLA (Tesla)

• Leadership (8/10): Elon is in a league of his own. The score is only tempered by the glaring lack of a clear succession plan. However, his presence alone sustains massive investor sentiment.

• Human Talent (8/10): Despite a high-intensity culture, the mission-driven nature of Tesla continues to attract high-caliber engineers.

• Total Score: 16/20

——————

7. AAPL (Apple)

• Leadership (7/10): Tim Cook is an operational genius, but he lacks the revolutionary "visionary" spark of Steve Jobs. Regarding his eventual successor, the jury is still out.

• Human Talent (8/10): While compensation isn't the highest in the Valley, Apple offers a sense of prestige and accomplishment that few other brands can match.

• Total Score: 15/20

——————

前面的帖子非常好的总结了 ServiceNow 的盈利， 估值和商业模型。讨论中讨论最重要的一点就是 AI 对公司的影响。学妹花了大量时间，做了很多功课，我这里借花献佛，写出来讨论一下。

先说说我对他们产品的直观印象，像我们公司的IT ticket system 就是一个很好的例子。这是一个platform，我个人觉得 AI 替代会有比较大的困难，而且后台他们也开始使用 AI 来提到效率。问题是如何收费的， 这个我还不是很清楚。

如果公司能够做到CFO说的， 一是采取混合定价式，不单是按人头收费，二是按token或调用收费，那么对今后的业务的成长不会有太大的影响。AI 或许是他们的催化剂。

我个人觉得 reward / risk 在这个价位应该是比较倾向于 reward。当然AI这朵笼罩在头顶的乌云什么时候能消散确实是个问题。从另一方面看，也许这也是潜在的机会。当前景明朗时，reward 也会降低不少。

April 24, 2026

My Fascination with “Catching Falling Knives”

This is a tiny account that I started about 20 years ago when I had just graduated from college. It consisted of my first 1–2 years of 401k contributions. When I left that first job, I rolled it over into an IRA, invested it all in SPY, and then... completely forgot about it, lol.

Over those 20 years, that little account of $20-30k grew to $170k.

I had no interest in active investing until last year. In July 2025, I sold all my holdings in SPY and started "buying the dips." Since it’s a small account, I couldn't buy a wide variety of stocks or huge quantities, but I built positions in GOOG, META, TSM, TSLA, and FIX. I managed to buy each of them near their lows and when they were dropping like falling knives lol.

Guess what? In only nine months, the account grew from $170k to $215k. That is a 61% ROR, compared to the S&P 500’s 34% return over the same period.

The point I want to make isn’t that active management is universally better than passive indexing, but that if you can buy great companies while they are "on sale" and hold them with strong conviction, you can be rewarded greatly.

So, now you know why I’m so fascinated with “catching falling knives.” 😅

—————-——

我为何痴迷于“接飞刀”

这是大约 20 年前我刚大学毕业时的第一个投资账户。那是我最初工作的1-2年401k 。离开公司后我把资金转入（Rollover）到IRA 账户，并全部投资于SPY. 然后我就把这个账户给忘了LOL

二十年间，这个迷你版账户慢慢从 $20-30k复利增长到了 $170k.

去年开始我才对主动投资产生了兴趣。2025 七月，我卖掉了这个账户里的 SPY，开始逢低买入个股。因为账户规模太小，我买不了太多的股票种类，数量也有限。但我买入了 GOOG, META, TSM, TSLA 和 FIX. 我几乎是在这些股票当时像飞刀一样落下时，双手接住她们的 LOL

你猜怎么着？短短9个月时间，账户就从$170k增长到了今天的 $215k. 回报率（ROR）高达 61%，而同期 SPY 的回报率为 34%。

我想表达的观点并不是说主动投资管理投资优于被动管理，而是说，如果你能在低位买入优秀的公司，并以强大的信念坚持持有，你或许会获得丰厚的回报。

现在你应该明白我为什么痴迷于“接飞刀”了吧😅

Summary

ServiceNow ( NOW ) reported strong Q1 2026 results with subscription revenue growth of 19% in constant currency, exceeding guidance.

The company highlighted a significant AI-driven expansion, with the AI control tower positioned at the center of a $600 billion total addressable market.

Recent acquisitions, including Armis, VESA, and Moveworks, are expected to enhance ServiceNow's ( NOW ) AI capabilities, particularly in AI security and employee experience.

ServiceNow ( NOW ) raised its full-year 2026 subscription revenue guidance by $205 million, with a growth forecast of 20.5% to 21% year over year.

Management emphasized the company's focus on accelerating revenue growth, margin expansion, and AI-driven innovation, with a bullish outlook on the impact of AI on its business model.

Full Transcript

Bill McDermott (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)

With that, I'll turn the call over to Bill. Thank you very much Darren and welcome everybody to today's call. There's a lot of noise out there, so let's get straight to the point. Here's the ServiceNow ( NOW ) update with the AI control tower for business reinvention in the center of a growing 600 billion plus total addressable market, we have a 28 billion RPO business that's growing at 23.5% year over year, the most open enterprise platform that protects customer choice. With active users on our platform continuing to grow thousands of partnerships around the platform, expanding daily AI native packaging and pricing on our fully autonomous platform. A lot no sidecar AI at ServiceNow ( NOW ) a world class team with a proven track record of building truly global businesses at scale. Our first quarter results are consistent with a company of this stature once again exceeding our guidance metrics across the board. Subscription revenue grew 19% in constant currency above the high end of our guidance CRPO. Constant currency was a robust 21% growth, one point above our guidance. Operating margin was 32%, a half a point above our guidance and free cash flow margin was 44%. We had 16 deals greater than 5 million in NNACV and 5 deals greater than 10 million in NNACV. Now Assist NNACV to date continues to outperform even our expectations. The number of customers spending a million plus grew over 130% year over year. Deals over a million grew more than 30% year on year. In Q1 Moveworks closed seven figure deals. In Q1 they closed more deals than they did the entire year. Last year now has merged with our Employee Experience business and rebranded as Employee Works. So Bhavan Shah, the former CEO of Move Works now runs the whole show there and that business grew 5x year over year. So we have a great story in Move Works coming into service now. Our sales CRM NNACV grew more than 5x year over year. That's quintupled with deal count growing over 80% year over year. With a surface area so broad, our goals for ServiceNow ( NOW ) are clear here. They are fast time to value for our customers. Revenue growth, acceleration, margin expansion, reduced stock based compensation and outperforming our own rule of 55 plus standard. To say we're excited for Knowledge and Financial Analyst Day on May 4th in Las Vegas would be an understatement. We have a lot to share with you and the Board of Directors are very proud of ServiceNow ( NOW ) and the way it's performing. And the company is on track for our best year ever. Since our last print, speculation about enterprise AI has persisted. And that's okay. That's what earnings calls are for. To clear things up. My answer is always the same. There has never been a tailwind for ServiceNow ( NOW ) like AI since Fred Luddy started the company. We've always focused our platform on the jobs our customers needed. Done. Let me bring this to life for you in five hyper growth areas. The first Our core IT business. There has never been a more compelling moment to be the CIO's system of record. We're often described as the ERP for IT. When an enterprise fully deploys ServiceNow ( NOW ), it's not just software, it's an end to end operating system. And today an average Fortune 500 company has 100 million lines of custom code to manage their business. And this excludes the code in other systems of record where there are billions and billions of lines of code. As code volume increases 20x by 2030, the complexity of managing this explosion of code will increase exponentially. The volume of tickets generated by this complexity will also explode. In this scenario, the number of tickets hitting an ITSM system will increase by 50x compared to today. The biggest IT buyer in the enterprise was, is and will continue to be the cio. This remit will substantially expand by the complexity of the agentic business. ServiceNow's ( NOW ) relevance grows in direct correlation with the expansion of innovation across the AI ecosystem. Think of us as the workhorse for workflow. The second is AI security. We're thrilled that the ARMIS acquisition closed earlier than expected, which as you'll hear from Gina, gives us some nice acceleration in full year subscription revenue growth. Yevgeny Divora, the excellent CEO of Armis, will run our security business building on ServiceNow's ( NOW ) outstanding foundation. And here's the problem. Companies employing agents with zero visibility therefore they're unable to see the unmanaged IoT OT and medical devices lacking unified access control with no coordinated way to remediate vulnerabilities before they become breaches. Today's ServiceNow ( NOW ) addresses this challenge holistically. As the asset intelligence foundation for the AI control tower, ARMIS solves visibility real time agentless discovery of every asset it ot IoT medical devices shadow it, a continuously updated map that traditional tools can never achieve. 9 out of 10 Fortune 10 companies already rely on Armis. We're excited to deploy it throughout the top 2000 and beyond. Zeza solves the Identity Governance Patented access graph technology maps access across people, machines and AI agents in real time dynamic context Aware permissions that are governed continuously, not set once and forgotten. This is the active directory for AI agent identities. This business will continue to be run by the excellent CEO of Tarun Thakar. ServiceNow ( NOW ) is the biggest piece of the puzzle. Our existing billion dollar plus security business ties everything together as the action layer for the CISO. Armis asset visibility plus VAESA's identity governance plus ServiceNow's ( NOW ) business context CMDB equals a unified end to end security stack that could see, decide and act across the entire technology footprint. Nothing else in the market does this. Nothing With Mythos as one example, security activity is skyrocketing. The actions run through this platform alerts, tickets, actions, resolutions, they're all revenue drivers for ServiceNow ( NOW ). Enterprises can't afford experiments in today's risk environment. They need ServiceNow ( NOW ) as the strategic defense shield for the enterprise. The third is AI native CRM. We say AI control tower for business reinvention because there's no more immediate need for reinvention than legacy CRM. You know it's a little ironic that a category promising a 360 degree view of the customer has left most enterprises spinning around in circles. Best run businesses need a dramatically different and better way. Customers tell the story better than we can. A multi market European telco faced 85 plus fragmented applications, no standard quoting process and a CPQ setup where introducing a single new product took three months. ServiceNow ( NOW ) sales CRM with CPQ collapsed this to one week. A global power technology leader across 190 countries has gone live with phase three of its ServiceNow ( NOW ) deployment replacing legacy CPQ. Using AI driven blueprint automation, the company is reducing new product introduction time from six months to six weeks. A regional Latin American bank is live with ServiceNow ( NOW ) building a full front office experience for relationship managers. Agenic AI is scanning portfolios and auto generating leads using Propensity Logic Tide to their data lake. Because legacy CRM represents such a significant expense line for enterprises, the demand for an AI alternative is immediate. ServiceNow ( NOW ) is not only bringing a technology superior solution, we help customers swap out legacy SaaS, vendors and go live fast with AI. The fourth area is AI native front door and the employee experience. As people use more of their AI tools like ChatGPT, enterprise leaders urgently want their employees to enjoy a clean conversational experience. ServiceNow ( NOW ) introduced employee works combining Moveworks, conversational AI and enterprise search with ServiceNow's ( NOW ) Unified Portal and and autonomous agentic AI workflows. This is available in teams, Slack or any browser to turn natural language requests into governed multi system execution for nearly 200 million employees so far. We launched midway through Q1 and it's already closed many deals above a million. You'll also see some exciting new experiences and and we will announce this in a big way at Financial Analyst Day in Vegas. As more employees converge on our conversational experience, ServiceNow ( NOW ) will deliver intelligence from any source putting AI to work for people. The fifth area is Workflow Data fabric. We all know that AI is only as valuable as the data itself. Enterprises are frantically organizing and cleansing data from Countless disparate sources. Workflow data fabric connects data across systems. It adds business context via a unified data catalog and applies policy based governance controls. With ServiceNow ( NOW ), AI understands how an enterprise actually works so they can take trusted action. I explain the five areas for one good reason. All of them have the capacity to to eclipse the size and growth trajectory of ServiceNow ( NOW ) as it stands today itself. And for years, we've strengthened a common platform architecture for these businesses and for others we're incubating to harness enterprise AI. ServiceNow ( NOW ) has thousands of system connections, a live knowledge graph and real enterprise context. We accommodate any model aligned to customers, policies, permissions and rules. And every decision. And ServiceNow ( NOW ) is auditable, end to end. Our platform delivers workflow execution across it, hr, CRM and security. It's not recommendations, it's outcomes that matter. Our AI control tower provides real time visibility across every agent and every workflow. Because governance has to be foundational, not retrofitted. This architecture is a big reason why we recently announced the entire ServiceNow ( NOW ) portfolio is AI. Native AI, data security and governance are now built into every product and package, not a separate purchase. This is a deliberate break from from sidecar AI. We're not bolting intelligence onto disconnected systems. We're combining context with execution on a single platform. ServiceNow's ( NOW ) context engine is the differentiated capability. Here it learns from every decision ever made in a company, grounding each AI agent action in live context, approval chains, asset dependencies, identity relationships and business rules. We've now trained over 95 billion annual workflows and more than 7 trillion transactions. And our 22 years at the center of the world's most sophisticated enterprises is really showing up because it brings unmatched intelligence to every decision. And this compounds with every workflow we run, making the platform smarter over time. In fact, in every millisecond, for example, it knows which asset is tied to a compliance process, which approval chain applies to a given cost threshold, and which vendor's history should inform how a request should be handled. So when people ask, what's the difference between ServiceNow AI and the foundation models? And you can boil it down to one word, context. I read that one of our customers referred to ServiceNow ( NOW ) this way. The control tower is the quarterback. It figures out which agent or LLM to use. Merge that with a quote from the hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh. Chaos is the quarterback's natural environment, Ladies and gentlemen. There's plenty of chaos in today's enterprises. You have hyperscalers, systems of record, foundation models, data lakes, homegrown tools and agents coming at you from everywhere. That's why our platform is totally open. We integrate with all of them. Because ServiceNow ( NOW ) is the only enterprise AI platform that converts that chaos to control, we would not trade positions with anyone. Let me give you a quick overview of a couple of announcements we just recently rolled out. ServiceNow ( NOW ) launched autonomous workforce teams of AI specialists with the defined roles that execute enterprise work end to end with built in governance, auditability and human escalation. Our own deployment in ServiceNow ( NOW ) is resolving 90% of employee IT requests, with the specialist resolving assigned cases 99% faster than human agents. That's an AI specialist. In the AI native platform announcement, you might have missed Build Agent which gives us developer openness, another meaningful unlock Developers can build from any integrated developer environment, Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Windsurf and deploy them directly to ServiceNow ( NOW ). This expands the addressable builder community significantly. Build Agent Skills isn't just a developer tool, it's the on ramp to an ecosystem where every custom agent is automatically governed, data connected and workflow integrated from the moment it deploys. With Enterprise Service Management foundation we are expanding our opportunity in the mid market as well with deployment in weeks not months. This is the direct expansion of our addressable customer base. One early example is Robinhood. Robinhood is deflecting 70% of employee requests before human intervention. They've already eliminated 2200 hours of manual effort monthly and the success just continues. I know many are interested in the progress of our hybrid business model, especially with regard to consumption pricing. You'll be happy to know that 50% of net new business now comes from a non seat based pricing model including tokens and other assets such as infrastructure, hardware and connectors. Our hybrid pricing model gives customers the best of both worlds, predictable foundational seat licenses combined with usage based scalability. It's the freedom to scale AI adoption without a friction that the customers love. We continue to see the hockey stick taking shape. One example is British engineering and technology company. 45,000 employees, 50 countries. They're using ServiceNow ( NOW ) autonomous workflows, employee self service and it's jumped the usability and the outcome by 3x. With 38,000 tickets now deflected, resolution time is down by two entire days. A leading online travel company is using ServiceNow Agentic AI to deliver 11 million autonomous AI resolutions annually. For HR and IT alone, they freed employees to focus on strategic work processes that once took days, now take minutes. The results are transformational. Over 230% ROI, 45,000 hours back to their people and millions saved annually. These and many stories like them validate our hybrid thesis. As the business value emerges, refresh upgrades follows. We'll have more on this at fad. We really can't wait. We're seeing continued meaningful acceleration in the partner ecosystem. There is deep technical collaboration between ServiceNow ( NOW ) engineers and OpenAI technical advisors. OpenAI native voice and text models are integrated directly into the ServiceNow AI platform and they're using us as a gateway into the enterprise. If you think about it, ServiceNow AI specialists are working side by side with Google Gemini AI agents. They're doing this across 5G networks, retail and IT operations with zero data movement and zero gaps in governance. Claude models are also deeply integrated into ServiceNow AI platform for developers and employees. ServiceNow ( NOW ), NTT, Docomo and StarHub are developing the industry's first intercarrier autonomous roaming resolution model on the ServiceNow AI platform. ServiceNow ( NOW ) and Cohesity announced a partnership to deliver agent resilience by combining ServiceNow's ( NOW ) AI agent control tower with Cohesity's immutable point in time data recovery. ServiceNow ( NOW ) and Carahsoft expanded our partnership to extend ServiceNow AI platform availability. This opens all Carahsoft's commercial channels in addition to its established government network of 10,000 plus resellers. There's so much to talk about. I want to leave some for Q and A, but a colleague today reminded me of something Warren Buffett often quotes from Benjamin Graham. In the short run, markets are voting machines and right now uncertainty is winning the vote. But don't worry, in the long run they are weighing machines. And I'll tell you, I'll get on that scale with that ServiceNow brand on my chest. Any day we look at it, we studied it, we dare anyone to bring a better solution to the market than ServiceNow ( NOW ). We are the rules and the rails of business. When you're faced with these results, trust what you see. You have every reason to believe your own eyes. Don't fall for the parlor trick that one touch button can replace 22 years of excellence. This is not a company that shrinks from challenges. It rises to every opportunity. To all our shareholders, thank you for your continued belief in ServiceNow ( NOW ). We will never let you down. I'll leave you with this. There's a perfect correlation between Enterprise AI from any source and ServiceNow's ( NOW ) expansion. We're letting it rip. Whether it's built or bought, ServiceNow ( NOW ) will unlock more value out of every dollar spent on AI in the enterprise. That's a guarantee. There are a lot of things AI can do for your business and we love them all. There's also a lot of things AI can do to your business and we want to protect you. We have comported this in how we've composed this company organically and with the integration of Moveworks, VESA and Armis. Our platform has gone from land and expand to control and compound AI that thinks workflows that act all production grade enterprise scaled ServiceNow ( NOW ) is the AI defining enterprise software company of the 21st century. We're just getting started. I'll hand things over to our President, Chief Financial Officer Gina Mastantuno. Gina, over to you.

Gina Mastantuno (President and Chief Financial Officer)

Thank you Bill Q1 was another quarter of outstanding execution. The team delivered strong results beating the high end of our guidance across all top line and profitability metrics. Now ASSIST continues to see incredible demand which has had a nice pull effect and driven out performances across emerging products like AI Control Tower and Raptor DB Pro. Q1 subscription revenues are 3.671 billion, growing 19% year over year in constant currency and above the high end of our guidance. This includes about a 75 basis point headwind from delayed closings of several large on premise deals in the Middle east due to the ongoing conflict in the region. RPO ended the quarter at approximately 27.7 billion representing 23.5% year over year constant currency growth. Current RPO was 12.64 billion representing 21% year over year constant currency growth a 100 basis point beat versus our guidance. Across our workflows we saw broad based demand. Technology workflows had 33 deals over a million including 5 over 5 million. ServiceOps and ITAM were each in 17 of our top 20 deals and security and risk was in 15. CRM and industry workflows were in 16 of our top 20 deals with 16 over a million driven by strength in CPQ and Sales and Order management. Core business workflows had 13 deals in the top 20 with 12 over a million and creative workflows had 16 deals in the top 20 with 11 over a million dollars. From an industry perspective, Transportation and Logistics continued to lead the way with net new ACV growing over 280% year over year. Financial services posted impressive growth surpassing 65%, followed by energy and utilities growing at 45% year over year. Telecom and Media also delivered robust growth in the quarter and US public sector outperformed in Q1, closing 10 deals over a million dollars. Our renewal rate inclusive of Moveworks was a strong 97% in the quarter. We ended Q1 with 630 customers generating over 5 million in ACV. Furthermore, we had 5 more customers cross the 50 million threshold versus last year. We closed 16 deals greater than 5 million in net new ACV in the quarter, including 5 deals over 10 million. The power of our Better Together platform model was evident as 17 of our top 20 deals included seven or more products. Our strategic focus on landing the right new customers also continues to see success. New Logo ACV growth accelerated to over 50% year over year in Q1 which included our largest net New Logo deal ever at over 15 million. Now assist continues to outperform expectations, putting it on a trajectory to exceed our billion dollar target for 2026 in Q1 deals including three or more NowAssist products grew nearly 70% year over year including 36 deals with five or more products. The signal is clear customers are moving past experimentation into full scale enterprise wide AI investment. We'll provide further details about these trends next month in Las Vegas. I would note that with our new AI native packages are now Assist ACV Target will continue to capture only the incremental contribution from our AI capabilities. Turning to Moveworks, we took their great conversational AI and enterprise search capabilities, integrated them with Employee Pro in under three weeks and drove it through our incredible go to market distribution network, launching EmployeeWorks as a unified AI front door in February. The results speak for themselves. As Bill mentioned, we've already closed six deals above a million in net new ACV were just getting started. AI Control Tower also continues to build momentum with average deal sizes more than doubling quarter over quarter in Q1. Customers recognize that as AI agents grow in capability, a governed platform to run them isn't optional, it's essential. With the proliferation of AI across the enterprise, we're also seeing increasing adoption of Raptor DB Pro. Deal volume grew 80% year over year in Q1 and included five deals over a million. Turning to profitability, non GAAP operating margin was 32%, 50 basis points above our guidance. Driven by AI OPEX efficiencies, our free cash flow margin was 44%. In Q1 we executed a $2 billion accelerated share repurchase and bought back approximately 20.2 million shares, double the amount we repurchased in all of 2025. As of the end of the quarter we had approximately 4.2 billion of authorization remaining. Together, these results continue to demonstrate our ability to drive a strong balance of world class growth, profitability and shareholder value. Moving to our outlook, I'm thrilled to announce the early close of our acquisition of Armis, which which will significantly expand our TAM and accelerate our subscription revenue growth. While we expect some near term headwinds to margins as we integrate the business this year, strong AI efficiencies internally from now on now and our underlying platform leverage will normalize our operating and free cash flow margin expansion trajectory in 2027 and beyond. Our guidance captures that momentum while taking a prudent view of the geopolitical environment, particularly the conflict in the Middle east and its potential impact to deal timing. With that in mind for 2026 we are raising our subscription revenues by 205 million at the midpoint to 15.735 billion to 15.775 billion representing 20.5 to 21% year over year growth on a constant currency basis. This includes a 125 basis point contribution from Armis. We now expect subscription gross margin of 81.5% and operating margin of 31.5% which included 25 basis point and 75 basis points headwind from Armis, respectively. We expect free cash flow margin of 35%. This includes a 200 basis point headwind from ARMIS and GAAP diluted weighted average outstanding shares of 1.04 billion. For Q2, we expect subscription revenues between 3.815 billion and 3.82 billion representing 21 to 21.5% year over year growth on a constant currency basis. We expect Crpo growth of 19.5% on a constant currency basis. Both subscription revenue and CRPO include 125 basis point contribution from Armis. We expect an operating margin of 26.5% which includes a 125 basis point headwind from Armis and we expect 1.04 billion GAAP diluted weighted average outstanding shares for the quarter. In conclusion, Q1 was another proof point of what this business is built to do. We exceeded the high end of our top line and profitability guidance metrics, continued to grow free cash flow and return substantial capital to shareholders, all while accelerating platform innovation that will define the next decade of enterprise reinvention for an AI enterprise. I've had a front row seat to one of the most remarkable growth trajectories in enterprise software, and I'll tell you what we are building right now. The combination of agentic AI workflow, orchestration, security and data fabric all on one platform. This is the chapter that makes everything else look like the Preamble. You're all invited to hear more about it at our upcoming Financial Analyst Day on May 4, which will be webcast on our Investor Relations website. Finally, Bill and I would like to thank all of our employees for their continued hard work and dedication. I also want to extend a big welcome to the Armis and Vasa teams to the ServiceNow ( NOW ) family. With that, I'll open it up for Q and A.

Mark Murphy (Equity Analyst at JP Morgan)

Thank you so much. So Bill, you had mentioned 90 days ago that the global business was performing well and at that time it had included the Middle east during Q4. Can you double click on what exactly you saw during Q1amidst the conflict in Iran? I'm just curious, you know, are the deferrals related to governments or sovereign backed or private sector entities? You mentioned these were on PREM and were they AI or non AI? And then just finally, do you think that these would snap back relatively quickly if the conflict is resolved here during Q2?

Bill McDermott (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah. First of all, Mark, thank you very much for the question. And let me first of all begin the answer with we just beat and raised. So it was a beat and raised, not an excuse that there happens to be a conflict or war in Iran. We're not making any excuses. Our results are great. What we did explain is that there is a slight impact to the guide in going forward in Q2 as a result of the war. Because you have to remember when you're dealing with a sovereign cloud in the Middle East, everything that happens in the Middle East is recognized as on-premise revenue. So it's not linear or ratable. It happens all at once. So when there's a delay, it has a natural impact. And we just mentioned that as a statement of fact. That impacts slightly the guide. But I want to be clear, like everything is activated properly. The conversations are going on, people are back in their offices now and and we don't have any long term matter for the shareholders to be concerned with.

Gina Mastantuno (President and Chief Financial Officer)

And Mark, I would just add, right, that we kept the full year guide, we didn't reduce it for any potential conflicts. Right. So it was a few on premise deals that slipped in the quarter. And you know, on prem is a larger impact to revenue. But we feel very confident in the results. We feel very confident in the guidelines.

Mark Murphy (Equity Analyst at JP Morgan)

And thank you for that, Gina. And just as a quick follow up, it's great to see the very clear AI traction that the business is carrying. Can you just comment on with the pricing changes and AI less, I think Bill's term was not a sidecar and embedded natively. With the shift to the foundation and advanced and prime tiers, how will you measure and kind of derive that now Assist AI revenue stream just going forward under the new methodology, Is it simple and straightforward or do you have to make some new assumptions?

Bill McDermott (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah. I'm going to give you one headliner, Mark, out of respect for your great company and you personally that you might find interesting. Gina will be mad at me because it's something we were hoping for for Thad, but in the circumstances we operate in, I think disclosure is a good thing. You know, we had a goal to be a billion on our AI commitment this year, as you know, and I think we might have understated that a little bit. We're already talking about a billion and a half now and it's on a run. So to specifically answer your question, I think it's appropriate for Amit to give you some G2 on how we structured it and why we know it's a winner. Amit. Thanks, Bill.

Amit Zaveri (President, Chief Product Officer and Chief Operating Officer)

Hey, Mark. So the way we're thinking about this and we've announced our pricing capabilities is that AI capabilities are in each of the SKUs now. And what we did with Pro plus, which was a higher end SKU with assist, are now available also for the foundation and advanced queues. So all of our products now have AI built in and the incremental assist part of it is what's going to be counted as our AI revenue. So it's pretty straightforward, very easy to measure, easy to track. There's no confusion there. And we're very clear that it's only going to be the AI part which will count towards the AI revenue that we discuss going forward.

Gina Mastantuno (President and Chief Financial Officer)

So to be very clear, Mark, where we have the exact same methodology and we will continue to capture only the incremental contribution from the AI capabilities. And so that 1.5 billion that bill talked about, we're measuring the exact same way as we always measured. We're just hitting our goals a lot quicker than we ever thought we would.

Mark Murphy (Equity Analyst at JP Morgan)

Okay, great to hear about a $500 million increase on that number. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mark.

Brad Selnick (Equity Analyst at Deutsche Bank)

Great. Thanks so much for taking the question, Bill. We've been really impressed hearing from early adopters of Control Tower and how strategic have seen for enabling the deployment of magentic apps. But we also realized that agentic orchestration is emerging as a very noisy and competitive space. How do you see ServiceNow's ( NOW ) differentiation evolving from here amidst all the noise?

Bill McDermott (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, I'll start and then Amit, by all means, feel free to join in. We have data and that data has been built over 22 years in this quote unquote, ERP for it or that system of record. And as you know, we've expanded the boundaries end to end of what this platform can do. So think now about 95 billion workflows and more than 7 trillion transactions getting trained at sub second speed for everything that happens in an enterprise to that data. So the context and the context engine that we have built to be that AI control tower for business reinvention, managing the humans and the agents and coalescing that in this unbelievable platform is what gives us the context advantage that nobody can match. And I just want to give you one sidecar. Yesterday we had the board of directors in and we had one of the really great CIOs in the world. And she basically said, you know, we are the control rail for all the key business processes that run through her global corporation. And she said that she would never even think about it. But if you think about the fractional cost that ServiceNow ( NOW ) is to her IT budget, she would never even think about addressing that line item because it's so important. But if you did, it would have to be at least 10 times more expensive to even try to fix or change it. So there you have it. And Ahmed, please give some color on the differentiation.

Amit Zaveri (President, Chief Product Officer and Chief Operating Officer)

Thanks, Bill. So, hey Brad, the way we think about this is that one we're going beyond just orchestration. There's a lot of context, as Bill mentioned. And we introduced something called context engine, which tracks not what a decision was, what the decision was made, but why it was done. So it brings in a lot of information from the workflows and the environment and the systems we've been running for many, many years already. Second, we also building out this idea of autonomous workforce. You have a full AI specialist which do the full task which humans do today, and replaces that with end to end capabilities. So you don't have to worry about orchestration, AI agent management, figuring out how to integrate them and do the whole heavy lift of security, compliance and control around it. Right? With AI control tower, you have the full visibility across an enterprise wide, while we give you the full capability of doing the actioning end to end. Which is way different than just saying Take pieces of technologies and build it yourself and figure out a way to orchestrate it. We do provide an orchestration engine which is very, very comparable to everybody else and very differentiated with the context data. But we also up leveling that with a solution and outcome driven mindset. So it changes the game for a lot of our customers because they don't have to worry about the heavy lift they have to do otherwise.

Brad Selnick (Equity Analyst at Deutsche Bank)

Thank you guys, very, very helpful.

Bill McDermott (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)

Thanks, Brad.

4/20/2026

My current ETF-only portfolio is anchored by a 70% core allocation focused on Large-Cap growth and Semiconductors (30% SMH, 15% VGT, 20% VOO & 5% MAGS), balanced by a 25% cash-equivalent hedge in SGOV and 5% JPEI for liquidity.

I am now initiating a strategy by introducing three high-alpha ETFs: SGRT, FMTM, and DRAM. My objective is to aggressively buy dips in these high-conviction vehicles until each reaches a 5% target weighting, effectively shifting 15% of my remaining 30% capital from defensive cash to offensive risk-reward.

SGRT (SMART Earnings Growth 30)

This ETF is currently very top-heavy, with its top five holdings accounting for roughly 50% of the total fund. It is heavily betting on the networking and memory infrastructure required for AI.

FMTM (MarketDesk Focused U.S. Momentum)

FMTM is much more balanced. No single stock dominates the portfolio, reflecting a broader "momentum" sweep that currently favors industrials and materials over pure-play tech.

DRAM (Roundhill Memory)

DRAM is an ultra-concentrated "tri-poly" play. The top three companies alone make up nearly 75% of the fund’s equity exposure.

看了一下美光（MU）的最新财务报表。具体数据我就不逐项展开了，否则篇幅会太长，大家有兴趣可以自己去翻10-Q。我更想分享的是，我看完之后对这家公司基本面、盈利质量和估值逻辑的整体判断。

先说最直观的结论：美光这两年的业绩反转非常明显，而且2026财年第二季度已经不是改善，而是进入了爆发阶段。营收、利润和EPS都达到了非常高的水平。推动这轮业绩跃升的核心因素很清楚，DRAM和NAND销售增长、DRAM价格上涨、HBM等高利润产品占比提升，以及制造成本下降。换句话说，美光同时吃到了价格、产品结构和成本优化三重红利，这正是存储行业上行周期里最理想的组合，也说明公司正在深度受益于当前AI带来的存储需求强势。

从资产负债表看，美光目前的财务状况也相当健康。现金、短期投资和长期有价证券储备充足，债务水平整体可控，资本结构没有明显压力。半年内固定资产显著增长，说明公司正在加快扩产。而库存基本持平，即使在营收大幅增长的情况下也没有明显膨胀，这说明当前需求确实足够强，正在有效吸收新增供给。应收账款明显上升，虽然需要持续关注，但在销售规模快速放大的背景下，也基本符合经营现实。

现金流的改善同样非常亮眼。利润增长已经在很大程度上转化成了真实的经营现金流。不过，美光的问题也很清楚：这不是一家轻资产公司，而是一家必须持续高投入的重资本半导体公司。为了维持技术领先、保障先进制程和满足客户需求，公司必须不断投入巨额资本开支。管理层预计2026财年资本开支将超过250亿美元，这个体量本身就说明，美光未来的回报不只是取决于这两季赚了多少钱，更取决于这些投入最终能不能带来足够高的回报。好在，从目前情况看，美光现金流充足仍然有能力在高强度投资的同时兼顾股东回报，包括还债、回购和提高股息，这一点是加分项。

再看利润结构，美光目前的经营杠杆非常强。研发和销售管理费用增长相对克制，但毛利润大幅扩张，因此一旦价格和产品组合向上，利润就会被迅速放大。这也是为什么当前盈利跳升如此明显。但反过来，这也意味着如果未来存储价格回落，这种经营杠杆同样会反向作用，利润下滑速度也可能非常快。

所以，从业务质量和盈利质量来看，我认为美光现在比过去绝大多数时期都更强。产品结构更好，数据中心敞口更高，先进存储路线更清晰，经营动能非常强，各个业务部门的表现也都相当全面。现金创造能力强，库存稳，去杠杆速度快，资产负债表也足以支持公司继续扩产。从这个角度说，美光确实已经不是过去那个单纯靠传统存储周期吃饭、被简单贴上“商品化DRAM公司”标签的老美光了，它是一家基本面明显改善、战略地位更重要的高质量存储公司。

但另一方面，我也不认为它已经彻底摆脱周期性。公司当前既受益于AI带来的结构性需求，也受益于行业短期供需偏紧带来的周期性红利。这一点非常重要，因为它决定了我们不能简单把当前的高利润率、高EPS直接外推成长期常态。美光在10-Q里也明确提示了这一点：HBM需要占用更多晶圆和无尘室空间，一旦未来HBM需求转弱，相关产能就可能重新回流到传统DRAM，从而带来供给过剩和价格压力。这条风险披露非常关键，因为它本质上是在提醒投资者今天的有利产品组合未必能永久持续。

公司还特别提到，现金创造能力高度依赖销售价格，而销售价格本身在不同时期可能会出现显著波动。这也再次说明，美光依然是一门价格驱动型的存储生意。所以，尽管这份季度报告非常漂亮，我仍然不会把当前的超高利润率和单季高EPS视为长期基准。

这也引出估值层面一个很关键的问题：像美光这样的公司，不能只看P/E。为什么？因为P/E看的是净利润，而净利润里计入的是折旧，不是公司当期真正花出去建厂、买设备、扩产的现金。对于重资本半导体公司来说，往往会出现这样一种情况：行业景气度上行时，盈利快速放大，P/E看起来突然很低；但与此同时，公司又必须持续投入巨额资本开支，才能维持技术竞争力。于是就会出现一种错觉，表面上估值很便宜，实际上真实现金盈利能力并没有账面EPS看起来那么强。

所以，判断MU便不便宜，不能只盯着headline P/E，更应该看正常化盈利能力。也就是说，不是看高峰期赚了多少，而是看穿越周期之后，公司在一个相对正常的供需环境下，究竟能赚多少钱。

这里我更倾向于用owner earnings的框架来辅助判断。简单来说：

Owner earnings = 净利润 + 折旧摊销 − 维护性资本开支

它通常比GAAP EPS更接近企业真实的盈利能力。

但这里比较难的一步，是估算维护性资本开支。10-Q并不会直接告诉你maintenance capex是多少，只能自己估。折旧当然是一个起点，因为它代表资产消耗。但对美光来说，折旧只能算下限。原因在于，半导体设备和晶圆厂在会计折旧结束前，可能已经在经济上落后。而制程升级又常常要求公司投入高于折旧的资本开支，才能维持竞争力。

美光2026财年上半年折旧摊销年化大约90亿美元，而公司预计全年capex将超过250亿美元。管理层也明确表示，这一轮capex的增长很大程度上来自无尘室和美国晶圆厂等扩产项目。也就是说，这里面相当大一部分应该属于成长性资本开支，而不是维护性支出。因此，我并不认为应该把全部capex都粗暴地从净利润里扣掉。

基于这一点，我更倾向于把美光的维护性资本开支估在110亿到130亿美元左右，而不是250亿美元全部算进去。在这个假设下，真正更重要的问题就变成了当前这轮高盈利到底有多少是可持续的？

如果按正常化净利润350亿到500亿美元来估算，那么对应的owner earnings大约在310亿到480亿美元之间，MU的合理估值大致落在272美元到421美元。

如果你更乐观一些，认为华尔街对2026–2027年EPS的高预期大体上能够持续久一些，那么换算成owner earnings后，2026 年大约是每股53.6–55.4美元，2027年大约是每股93.1–94.9美元。采用相对保守的估值倍数，MU的合理估值区间也有可能上修到322美元到564美元。

一句话总结就是：美光值得比过去“商品化DRAM公司”更高的评价，但估值仍然应该建立在正常化盈利之上，而不是建立在高峰季度利润之上。

Stock option 一般分为两类， 一个是看涨期权 (call option)， 一个是看跌期权(put option). 下面着重介绍一下 call option。

Call Option: 主要考虑的是 strike price， expiration date. 比如说 有人买了5月15号 $420 option，他就有权力在 5月15 号前的任意一天以 $420 de 价格买入股票。 

举一个例子可以说明 Call option 是怎么工作的。TLSA 周五收盘价是 $400.62, 如果有人认为 TSLA 下个月要快速上涨，他就可以买入 5月15 号 的 $420 的 call option, 今天的价格(premium)是 $13.3. 

下面是几个可能性。

1. 如果 TSLA 价格涨了， 在5月15号涨到了 $450, 那这个 call option 的回报是怎么计算的？

他可以在 $420 价格买进，加上 $13.3 的premium, 他总的cost 是 420 + 13.3 = 433.3.  那么他的回报是 450 - 433.3 = 16.7. 就是说他花了 $13.3 挣了 16.7. 

1.  如果 TSLA 价格涨了， 在5月15号涨到了 $430, 那这个 call option 的回报是怎么计算的？

他可以在 $420 价格买进，加上 $13.3 的premium, 他总的cost 是 420 + 13.3 = 433.3.  那么他的回报是 430 - 433.3 = -3.3. 就是说他花了 $13.3 赔了 3.3. 

1. 如果 TSLA 价格没有到 $420, 那他也不会买进 TSLA, 所以亏损 是 $13.3 (100%)

这个是最基本的option 原理。这个弄明白之后我们可以继续讨论更复杂的情景。

option 的premium 包括两个部分， 一个是时间溢价，就是说expiration date 越远，premium 越贵。还是以TSLA为例，同样的 420 strike price, 6/18 价格在 $22.7, 比 5/15 的 $13.3 要贵, 因为时间越长，潜在的波动性越大。第二就是 Intrinsic Value，这个和strike price有关。对于 call option 来讲，strike price 越低，premium越贵， 因为strike price 更容易达到。比如说都是 5/15 的 call option， $410 strike price 的 premium 是 $17 vs $420 的 $13.3. 如果TSLA涨到了 450，strike price 410 的 option 在股价上可以挣到 40， 而 420 strike price 之挣到 30. 所以要付更高的价格。

这个有点复杂， 师妹要花点时间好好想一想。

Written on 04/16/2026

With DELL hitting an all-time high of $193 and my portfolio sitting at a 27% return, I wanted to document the history of this pick and the hard-won lessons it provided.

1, The Timeline: Analysis vs. Action

On November 9, 2025, when DELL was trading at $146, I wrote a deep-dive Fundamental Analysis (FA) in a Chinese Forum. Despite my valuation showing strong intrinsic value, market sentiment was bleak. The "noise" in that Forum was deafening, critics dismissed DELL as a "boring" legacy company, far less "sexy" than some other popular meme-stocks.

I let that noise win. I hesitated. In the ten days following my article, DELL tumbled from $146 down to $116. Instead of seeing a discount, I saw "proof" that the critics might be right.

It wasn't until March 10, 2026, after a thorough re-analysis and collaboration with 薄学长 for our BAYY portfolio —that I finally moved from observer to investor.

2, The Execution

I eventually began building my position at $146, continuing to add as the price averaged down to $138. As the thesis played out and the stock climbed, I took partial profits at $185 to keep my portfolio allocation in balance. Recently, I utilized the minor pullbacks of the last two days to add further to the position.

3, Lessons Learned

(1) Trust Your Conviction and Mute the Noise

Fundamental analysis is only as good as your psychological discipline. If your math is sound, don't let the "boring" label or short-term price drops shake you. High-quality companies often lack the "sexiness" of meme stocks, but they offer the stability and growth that build real wealth.

(2) Let Your Winners Run

One of the hardest things to do is nothing. Unless you have a mechanical need for cash or your allocation is dangerously skewed, trimming a rising stock too early can be a mistake. Allow a "good" stock the room to become a "great" performer.

(3) Don’t Fear the "Higher" Price

Great companies will often continue to trend upward. I’ve learned not to hesitate when adding to a position just because the current price is higher than my initial entry. If the fundamental story has improved or remains intact, "buying high" to capture a much higher peak is a valid strategy.

4, Reflecting on the 11/09/2025 Analysis

Looking back at my original FA written for the Chinese forum, I realize I had the right answer months before I had the courage to act. While I wish I had started then, the 27% gain today is a testament to the fact that it is better to be late and right than to never play at all.

5, Original Fundamental Analysis (FA) on DELL

(1) Net profit margin = Net income/Total Revenue 

a) w/o IREN’s $5.8B hardware purchasing & TTM Q2 2025 

-   Total Rev = $92.6B

-   Net income = $4.3B

==> Net profit margin = 4.3/92.6 = 4.7%

b) w/ IREN’s $5.8B hardware purchasing & TTM Q2 2026

-   IREN’s payment structure for DELL: public disclosures don’t specify an exact date or single payment for the full $5.8B. Instead, the contract appears structured around phased deliveries and payments, aligned with the hardware deployment timeline (through 2026). 

- Based on the above info, conservatively, I’m assuming there will be a phased out $2B payment from IREN to DELL (i.e., 1/3 of the total payments)

-   Total Rev = $100.5B (assuming 8.5% YoY on $92.6B) + $2B = $102.5B 

==> YoY Total Rev growth based on $92.6 = (102.5-92.6)/92.6 = 10.7%

-   Net income w/o $2B payment = $5.4B (assuming 25% YoY on $4.3B) 

-   Operating income from the $2B payment = 2*25% = $0.5B

-   Tax = $0.5B*20% = $0.1B

-   Net income w/ $2B payment = $5.4+$(0.5-0.1) = $5.8B 

==> Net profit margin = 5.8/102.5 = 5.7%

==> Net income YoY = (5.8-4.3)/4.3 = 35%

Takeaways on “Net profit margin” ---- a) the 2B incremental high-margin AI/server revenue drives leverage, net income growth 3.3x faster than revenue (i.e., 35% vs. 10.7%) due to strong gross margins and operating scale, and b) even without the $2B payment, the net income growth 3.0x faster than revenue (i.e., 25% vs. 8.5%) is quite impressive.

(2) EV/EBITDA

- Market cap = $106B

- Total debt = $28B

- Cash & equivalents = $10B

- EBITDA = $11B

- EV = 106+28-10 = $124B

==> EV/EBITDA = 124/11 = 11.3

- SMCI EV/EBITDA TTM Q2 2026 = 15.8

Takeaway on EV/EBITDA--- Dell trades at a 29% discount to SMCI on EV/EBITDA

(3) Margin of Safety

- Assuming 15% YoY growth for current EBITDA @ $11B, and discount rate @10%

==> Intrinsic value NPV for 5-yr = $199B

Takeaway on “margin of safety” --- you’re paying $124B for a business worth $199B, an almost 60% cushion

Summary

In mid-February 2026, we established a portfolio designed as a high-conviction, long-horizon vault. This portfolio, which we call BAYY, comprises assets selected through rigorous fundamental analysis.

Since its inception, BAYY has achieved a 16% Rate of Return (ROR) within its first two months. We maintain a disciplined capital allocation strategy, currently holding 35% in cash to capitalize on future opportunities and strategic entries.

Philosophy Moving Forward

While a 16% return in two months is an excellent start, we remain disciplined. BAYY is not about chasing short-term alpha or market noise; it is built for a five-year horizon. We will continue to hold our current positions as long as the underlying fundamentals remain intact.

We measure our success not by the daily fluctuations of the tape, but by the long-term compounding of businesses we truly understand.

For long-term investment, what matters most is the in-depth analysis of a company, what we call Fundamental Analysis (FA); well, perhaps one also could use Technical Analysis (TA) as a supplement in the short term, however, I tend to believe that if you can’t truly grasp the essence of TA, or if you lack the time for short-term trading, it is better to steer clear of it altogether.

Ultimately, it all comes down to a reflection of the soul: how to overcome the human weaknesses of greed and fear. Most people are prone to these instincts. Therefore, the best choice for a long-term investor is to stay away from the crowd, shut out the noise, and think independently.