Sho-Time: AI Revive, Value Alive

Research evidence excerpt

Sho-Time: AI Revive, Value Alive

IdeaM

AI Revive, Value Alive

Our base case is a market in which a “rotation back into AI”

coexists with a “catch-up in lagging cyclical value”

In assessing this summer’s earnings season, we believe investors should avoid viewing the

market through a simple “AI versus non-AI” or “growth versus value” framework, and

instead consider the following three scenarios.

Our base case is that US hyperscalers maintain bullish capex plans and global fund flows

rotate back into AI-related stocks. Under this scenario, the momentum factor is likely to

regain effectiveness. However, high earnings expectations are already embedded in

Japanese AI-related stocks, meaning not all AI names are likely to rise uniformly. Instead,

as the benefits of AI investment broaden into adjacent areas of the value chain, we would

focus on the possibility that lagging cyclical value stocks catch up in parallel.

The second scenario is one in which, in addition to bullish capex plans from US

hyperscalers, earnings from Japanese AI-related companies clearly exceed elevated market

expectations, resulting in renewed concentrated inflows into AI-related stocks. In this case,

cyclical growth would outperform, while the re-rating of cyclical value could be deferred

—particularly if macro uncertainty, including developments in the Middle East, increases

further.

The third scenario is a shift toward risk-off conditions, as AI-related companies fail to clear

higher earnings hurdles while geopolitical risks and supply-chain concerns intensify.

Position unwinding in high-beta AI-related stocks could accelerate a momentum reversal.

At this stage, we view the first scenario—a market in which a “rotation back into AI”

coexists with a “catch-up in lagging cyclical value”—as our base case.