U.S. Equity Insights: Pricing a capex supercycle

Research evidence excerpt

U.S. Equity Insights: Pricing a capex supercycle

Equity Research

Equity Strategy

5 June 2026

U.S. Equity Insights

Pricing a capex supercycle

As AI investment scales to levels rivaling the capex

supercycles of the 1990s and 2000s, we highlight EV/EBITDA

as a valuation metric that gains signal strength over P/E, U.S. Equity Strategy

when evaluating medium-term investment horizons that Venu+1 212Krishna,526 7328CFA

venu.krishna@barclays.comcoincide with elevated capex.

BCI, US

Rex Feng

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rex.feng@barclays.com

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Key Points & Highlights

• Capex finds another gear. Aggregate S&P 500 capex is projected to grow 40% Y/Y in 2026 and

is on track to absorb roughly 50% of operating cash flows, levels that recall the supercycles of

the 1990s and 2000s. Tech is dead center with TMT capex as a share of total S&P 500 capex

projected to approach 50% this year, a step change even relative to the late-2010s public

cloud buildout. History suggests that when capex intensity reaches these levels, even good

investment can overshoot, raising the question of how much to pay for marginal return on

invested capital.

• EV/EBITDA gains signal strength over medium-term horizons when capex is elevated.

Over the last 30 years, EV/EBITDA exhibited a stronger linear relationship with S&P 500