저자: JosephHogue,CFA · 외국인
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AI 소프트웨어·서비스 다음 단계보다 AI 전력 수요 테마가 확실성이 높다고 주장. 미국 전력수요가 3년간 성장률 3배로 늘 것이며 원전 보유 IPP(Constellation, Vistra, Talen, NRG 등)가 수혜. 테슬라는 밸류에이션 저점 가능성, IBM·메타·알파벳 실적 기대. 금리는 연내 인하 기대 하향에도 실물 지표는 견조하다는 입장.
다듬은 글
good morning bow tie Nation, Joseph Hogue here. Thank you for joining us for our weekly market update, 9:00 a.m. Eastern every Monday morning, with the stocks to watch this week and the market news you need to know.
Nation, AI has been the theme this year, with Nvidia dominating. But nobody knows which stocks will dominate the next phase, the software and services of AI. Recently even chip stocks like Nvidia and TSMC have broken down. But there is one way to invest in AI that is about as close to a sure thing as you can get in this market. I'm going to highlight the seven stocks I'm watching in that group, so stick around. After that we'll do our Monday market update, including the important news on Tesla and Google owner Alphabet this week.
First, though, if you want to see the five stocks I'm buying for the next 30 years, my forever stocks, look for the link I'll leave in the description below. It's a free report I put together with the Motley Fool. Some of the biggest stocks in my portfolio are there. These are the stocks I'm following in major multi-year themes, with one of the picks up 100% and the group up an average 94% last year. That report is totally free. You'll see the first stock immediately, and they'll email you the full report with the other stocks. It's an easy way to support the Let's Talk Money community and see some of my favorite stocks to buy, so look for that link in the description below.
Back to our main topic. Shares of Nvidia have been the big winner in the AI boom, with the chipmaker growing revenue 126% last year, and Nvidia is likely to continue to dominate the semiconductor space. But the next phase of AI, where we'll see it change the world, is going to be in software and services. We've looked into some of those AI stocks best positioned for that phase. I own stocks like SoundHound AI, Salesforce, and Unity Software for just that. But the truth is, nobody knows. Sure, these companies should benefit, but the big breakthrough companies could just as easily come from startups. Who in 1999, as the internet bubble was inflating, had even heard of Google? You couldn't even buy shares until 2004. In fact, the leader in AI services right now, OpenAI, is a non-public company, so you cannot buy shares. But there is one group of stocks that will, without a doubt, ride that AI wave higher, and nobody can stop the revenue boom in utilities and power generation.
It's not what you'd expect to hear, that the next big growth stocks could be 100-year-old utility companies. But Amazon's purchase of a $650 million nuclear-powered data center has been a wake-up call for the market. Thanks to energy efficiency, electricity demand has been basically flat for more than a decade. This chart from S&P Global Insights shows annual demand pretty much stagnant around 4,000 terawatt-hours through the 2020s. Zoom out to the forecast, though, and we could see power demand jump over the next decades, at a demand growth rate three times what we've seen in the past. That growth rests on three trends that are only just starting to develop.
First, the onshoring of manufacturing, as factories come back to the US from China. Second, the boom in crypto mining, which now accounts for as much as 2% of the nation's electricity use, and where power demand has jumped 35% in the last six months to 19,000 megawatts. More than anything, though, is the rise of artificial intelligence and the immense amount of electricity demand forecast to run those acres of data centers. PJM Interconnection, the operator of a wholesale electrical market around Virginia, a data center hub, expects electricity demand to grow 2.4% a year for the next decade. That is six times the average growth we saw in the five years through 2021. Southern Company, a utility serving manufacturing hubs in Georgia, recently raised its forecast through 2030 by 17-fold, now expecting more than 6,600 megawatts of growth through the end of the decade.
I'm going to highlight the seven stocks that could benefit from this, but it looks like nuclear power generation is coming out as the big winner here. Nuclear companies generally have more excess capacity, meaning they can generate more electricity than they're obligated to sell to residential customers. And that generation is continuous, not dependent on the sun or wind like other renewables. The power purchase agreement between nuclear generator Talen Energy, ticker TLN, and Amazon last month for its data center appears to have been at a premium of at least 50% over what the provider usually gets on the market. Analysis by S&P Global Ratings highlights three other producers with that excess capacity: Vistra Corporation, ticker VST, which has capacity in coal, nuclear, and natural gas; Energy Harbor, ticker NRG, which, while it does have nuclear capacity, has less excess capacity than some of these other providers because it has that commitment to residential customers; and Constellation Energy, ticker CEG, which claims to have more nuclear capacity than all other generators combined.
Quick aside here. Maybe the best thing you'll learn from this video is this: if you look at that last slide, it's from the recent business outlook for Constellation. When you're looking for stocks to buy in a theme and doing your research, these company presentations can be a great source of market research. Constellation is basically showing you exactly the other companies you should be researching. In that first graphic, they show companies with nuclear generation capacity: CEG, VST, PEG (Public Service Enterprise Group), NEE (NextEra Energy), TLN (Talen Energy, which made that deal with Amazon), and Dominion Energy. So as you look through these themes and stocks, start looking through these company presentation reports. Just type the company's name plus "investor relations" into Google, and on the company's IR page you'll find all the SEC filings, the news, and those presentations to really help you dig into an industry and a group of stocks.
In this theme, you want to focus on the independent power producers rather than the regulated utilities. Independent producers generally have more excess capacity and can sell it to commercial buyers, whereas regulated utilities have their capacity earmarked mostly for residential customers. Besides those initial three stocks, PEG also has nuclear capacity that could be used for those data centers. NextEra Energy, ticker NEE, is a strong producer in the renewables theme, though it has less nuclear capacity. Even Dominion Energy, ticker D, is in that regulated electric space, so it's going to have less upside potential, of course.
Some of those winners have already taken off as the market catches on to this theme. In a one-year performance chart, you see Vistra and Constellation are already up over 100%, and Talen is up 82% over the period. The others have yet to take off, with PEG and Dominion stuck right around a 6% return, while NEE and Bloom Energy, another one I'm watching, are still negative for the year. That doesn't mean you should totally avoid the winners and just try to bottom-fish the laggards. I still like Constellation with its dominance in nuclear generation, but I'd definitely take a look at NEE and PEG as well. Another way to play this theme is through a one-stop fund like the VanEck Uranium and Nuclear Energy ETF, ticker NLR, which holds the electricity producers as well as key uranium producers.
Onto the stocks I'm watching this week. Tesla, ticker TSLA, is now down 50% from its 52-week high as it heads into Q1 earnings this Tuesday. The company is expected to report a 40% drop in earnings, to just 51 cents a share, after it announced it would cut 10% of its workforce as it transitions into the next phase of growth. Investors are worried that the next phase is slower, with revenue growth expected to be just up 6% this year, to $102 billion. Full-year earnings of $2.67 per share would be 14% lower than last year. The company recently rolled out plans for its robotaxi service and has really moved to cheer investors, but any revenue from that is likely more than a year away. Despite the downside, we could be approaching a bottom, with a valuation of just 4.7 times this year's revenue, less than half the valuation the stock commanded just last year. Long-term investors can feel confident buying at this level, while more risk-averse investors might want to sell puts against it or use a covered call strategy to lower their immediate risk.
International Business Machines, ticker IBM, also reports this week, on Wednesday. The shares are flattening out after a long-awaited rebound last year. I believe IBM may be one of the last undiscovered opportunities in AI stocks and could easily surprise the market. Current expectations are for just 2.8% revenue growth this year and 4% next year. Despite last year's big run in the stock, the valuation of 2.6 times this year's expected revenue is still really low.
Meta Platforms, ticker META, the old Facebook, also reports earnings Wednesday, after releasing its update to its Llama 3 AI assistant last week. Meta has taken the unique approach of open-sourcing its AI model, which could help it attract developers and train the model faster than other models like OpenAI's and Alphabet's Gemini. Initial reviews of this model are very good, and that adds to the outlook for the stock, which is already expected to grow revenue 17% this year and boost earnings 35% to $20 per share. So even though it's had a recent run, I still like Meta shares.
Alphabet, GOOG, is also likely to update the market on its AI ambitions when it reports earnings Thursday. Its Gemini model has been derided for being really behind in this race, especially against Microsoft's OpenAI ChatGPT, and could cost the company billions in lost search ad revenue. While Q1 earnings are expected up 29%, to $1.51 per share, full-year earnings growth is expected to slow to 17%, or about $6.81 a share.
For the bigger picture, Spider.com's sector tracker is a great free resource. Four of the 11 stock sectors did manage to close higher last week, with utilities and consumer staples really filling their role as safety sectors in times of market stress. Strength in financials and healthcare seems more like a bounce off the sell-offs of the last couple of weeks than any real market-beating outlook. Utilities are now up 7.3% over the last three months, nearly three times the return of the overall market, and I think this could be an investor's best friend, not only for safety during a market pullback but also for the upside potential we talked about in electricity demand.
While stocks have stumbled lately on the idea of higher rates for longer, this week's data should show that the economy and corporate profits might not give a damn. Wall Street is still forecasting two or three rate cuts this year, a disappointment from the six expected earlier, which has sent stocks lower by more than 5% from the highs. But there will come a point when broader fundamentals push this market higher. Case in point: orders for durable goods, the long-lasting manufactured goods like appliances, due out Wednesday, are expected to show an increase of 2.8%, up from just 1.3% growth last month. That doesn't seem like high borrowing costs are hitting corporate borrowers or the economy just yet.
Friday will bring the all-important personal consumption expenditures report, the PCE, the Fed's preferred measure of inflation. The expected headline number of 2.6% year-over-year inflation is slightly higher than last month's reported 2.5%, while core inflation of 2.7% is slightly below the 2.8% reported last month. All in all, if it comes in as expected or even below, that would be a relief, suggesting inflation may not be running quite as hot as we thought lately. More important than all this, though, is that Q1 earnings really start heating up this week, with 138 of the 500 S&P 500 companies reporting. If earnings come out above expectations, as they almost always do, that could be a further sign that a healthy economy doesn't need lower rates to send stocks higher.
Get your free report and see the stocks I'm buying for the next 30 years, my forever stocks, with the link in the description below. The group is up 94% last year alone and has a lot more room to run. Or click the video to the right to see my strategy for buying Nvidia for just $100 a share. Don't forget to join the Let's Talk Money community by tapping that subscribe button and clicking the bell notification.
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