Shanu Matthew, portfolio manager at Lazard, discusses historical EV growth rates and forecasts from BNEF, Rho Motion, and S&P Global Mobility.
Insight
Matthew: Hyperscalers hype power constraints to induce third-party infrastructure overbuilding
“So if you think about that from a power standpoint, my incentive in that scenario would be to talk up power constraints, right? Saying that there's not nearly enough of it. We need to build so much. Like this is the greatest cycle because that will incent spec…”
Insight
Matthew: Power constraints widen Nvidia's total cost advantage over less efficient chips
“Because since we are power constrained and that constraint is expected to get worse and power prices rise, the NVIDIA chip holders actually, like the TCO advantage that they have versus less efficient chips actually goes up in that scenario, right? So they act…”
Assertion Contradicted
Matthew: Constellation CEO says current power prices cannot support new gas plants
“If you look at the, like the last two earnings calls, right, you have the folks like the CEO of constellation talking about the fact that, you know, energy prices actually aren't supportive of building new gas plants, which may or may not be true.”
Assertion Supported
Matthew: AI capital expenditures have reached half a trillion dollars a year
“All the dollars that we're spending, you know, which is on the order of half a trillion dollars now a year”
Assertion Supported
Matthew: Top-tier lithium producers guided to negative free cash flow
“And if you look at a lot of what was said in this recent earnings season, a lot of the companies, so like a lot of the ones I just mentioned are what we'd call tier one producers. So they have the lowest cost assets in the world. So, you know, if anyone's maki…”
Insight
Matthew: Tech and energy have a duration mismatch of years versus decades
“The, you know, magnitude and duration of the cycle is of the debate, but it introduces a duration mismatch where technology is often done on cycles that are, you know, one to two years, whereas energy is typically multi-year, even multi-decadal, depending on t…”