I feel like traditional "value investing" went into hibernation. Before it was finding a 10x -12x P/E company like $UPWK or $PYPL, Dominoes, Pepsi. Or even a cheap Japanese company below book value. Then just enjoying slow growth but buyback/dividend appreciation from their cashflow. Now you can find 1.8x runrate P/E company like $ESMT that grew revenue 605.24% Y/Y. And the main thing you need to argue about is duration. Or a 16.2x trailing P/E Sumitomo, despite having way too many hyperscaler LTAs in AI from fiber to lasers. AI created much bigger medium-term anomaly, where "value investing" went towards high growth, "deep value" companies.

NOR flash “Severe Supply Shortage” with high density continued increases of 90-110% for H2. I wonder who sells both high density NOR and SLC NAND? *cough cough, $ESMT* For H1 hikes: NOR: +100–120% SLC NAND: +130–150% For H2 hikes: High-density NOR: 90-110% in H2 SLC NAND: ~70–75%. Obviously there’s others from Winbond / Macronix / Gigadevice, but my idea and position with ESMT is that it’s the largest beneficiary of the shortage relative to size. (they sell NOR: >256Mb) The moderate bearish part is: “For mid- and low-capacity products of 128Mb and below, additional capacity from Chinese suppliers is gradually coming online. Price increases for consumer-grade products are therefore expected to moderate” However, this update is overwhelmingly bullish for earnings of legacy memory players. Let the ASP hike games continue.

Okay I know this is US time and this is a Taiwan stock... But I really am starting to think $ESMT (3006) can cook like $SNDK. And I’m excited. So hopefully in a few months, people can something say similar... FUN FACT CHAT: Did you know.. 1 old DDR2 memory chip is.. ~$0.96? (from LCSC data) Obviously different per spec since some can be $2.5... But if you 3x ASP Hike this. That's a whole... ~$2 added to final BOM cost. So about the same cost as a $COST hot dog. It goes into things like a D-Link security camera, maybe like $33 final cost... and adds like $2. (which people won't mind) But... 3X ASP hike to ESMT? Is very, very material. That's just for one product category, and there's many others from SLC NAND (eg. +120–170% H2) to NOR Flash products for H2 ASP hike projections. And my favorite thing is, they've already shown they're willing to partake in the price hike games (seems like there's a long way to go)… Currently they make ~$111M net income a month from July earnings ($2.8B MC), which annualized is like ~2.1X P/E. *I have positions. So... I think $ESMT has room to cook like masterchef Sandisk. TLDR: - Repeated rounds of price hiking = seems absurd for the company's net income... but has potential due to starting low component cost. - Reminds me of early $SNDK but for other segments (legacy/niche memory).