CONNECTING THE DOTS: Capex Boom, Frontier exploration, Al orchestration, Halma, BSTL and Banks plus key research

Research evidence excerpt

CONNECTING THE DOTS: Capex Boom, Frontier exploration, Al orchestration, Halma, BSTL and Banks plus key research

Equity Research

19 June 2026 | 2:28PM BST

CONNECTING THE DOTS

Capex Boom, Frontier exploration, AI orchestration, Halma, BSTL and

Banks plus key research

Navigating the Capex Boom. Peter Oppenheimer’s must read on Capex here, Sahar Islam

+44(20)7051-4935 |

including why he expects more scope for alpha generation. We are hosting a call with sahar.islam@gs.com

Goldman Sachs International

him on Monday (sign up) along with some of the analysts from sectors which benefit

from the investment (e.g., Hardware, Utilities, Cap Goods). One of these sectors —

Utilities — looks very different to history given this growth, so we are also doing

a Back to Basics with Alberto Gandolfi to understand his new framework within

which we should view the sector (as well as covering some of the basics which

haven’t changed) – on Monday (sign up).

Frontier exploration is back even with a lower oil price. Amidst Iran and US MoU

headlines, oil has eased off to c$80/bbl, and despite feedback in the past few weeks

that clients were looking to buy the dip, energy equities have been weak. We would

revisit oil services names as a play on oil capex picking up. This week we saw more

evidence of this return to exploration and particularly frontier exploration, with

the list of areas IOCs and NOCs are willing to go growing according to feedback from

the EAGE seismic industry conference last week (via Viridien ex CGG) and Equinor

increasing capex by $1bn for 2027 and enhancing its focus on frontier exploration at

its CMD. We sat down with Michele Della Vigna and Anastasia Shalaeva to discuss

these takeaways in a c10 min episode of On the Road, listen here. The biggest