We recently published a list of Top 10 Trending AI Stocks to Watch. Since Coherent Corp. (NYSE:COHR) ranks 9th on the list, it deserves a deeper look.
Wall Street continues to gain momentum amid the latest earnings season and analysts are wondering whether we are still up for soft landing. Mohamed El-Erian, Allianz chief economic advisor, talked about the possibility of a soft landing vs no landing during a program on CNBC. When asked what would it take for the market to have a no-landing scenario, the analyst said:
“I think we need the productivity enhancers from A.I., from life sciences to come earlier, we need to continue to have positive shocks to our labor force. And if we get those two things, you can get the bigger but not hotter economy which actually would be perfect for almost everything you can think of, from households to companies to financial markets.”
The analyst does not rule out the possibility of a recession, however.
“My probability of a soft landing is 55%, and a recession is 30%. A soft landing is the most likely scenario, but it’s not dominant. Why isn’t it dominant? Because we have weakness in the household sector, particularly on the lower-income side, and the Fed has been unpredictable. Just think, Morgan—at the end of July, the Fed didn’t cut rates because everything seemed fine. By the next meeting in mid-September, it cut 50 basis points. And now it’s talking about cautious cuts. So, the Fed needs to be careful.”
For this article we picked 10 trending AI stocks based on latest news. With each company we have mentioned its hedge fund sentiment. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
A row of precision industrial lasers in action, cutting the most intricate of shapes.
Coherent Corp (NYSE:COHR)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 47
Citi Research predicts that capital expenditures for data centers among the leading four cloud companies will surge by 40% year over year, offering a boost to data center interconnect (DCI) providers. Citi anticipates that top tech companies will ramp up their data center investments by 40% to 50% in 2025.
Citi analysts, led by Atif Malik, noted in an investor report that “we estimate that the AI networking opportunity is expanding beyond the server connection within a data center to AI platforms connecting multiple data centers through DCI.”
Citi named Coherent Corp (NYSE:COHR) as one of the beneficiaries of this spending.
Coherent Corp (NYSE:COHR) makes optical materials and semiconductors. Its laser tech is used for laser welding for EV batteries and for UV lasers in mobile and high-end TV display industries. However, the spotlight is currently on its Communications segment, which is set to benefit from the expansion of cloud computing, AI, and machine learning. This segment, driven by the demand for datacom transceivers that handle higher data throughput, accounted for 52% of Coherent Corp (NYSE:COHR) recent market and grew by double digits year-over-year, particularly in North America and China.
NCG Small Cap Strategy stated the following regarding Coherent Corp. (NYSE:COHR) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“Coherent Corp. (NYSE:COHR) is a market leader in engineered materials, optoelectronic components, and lasers for use across various end markets, with attractive growth opportunities in areas such as the data center and electric vehicles. COHR recently hired a new CEO with a track record of enhancing business strategy to deliver consistent revenue growth and margin expansion, and we believe he has the opportunity to do the same at COHR.”
Overall, Coherent Corp. (NYSE:COHR) ranks 9th on Insider Monkey’s list titled Top 10 Trending AI Stocks to Watch. While we acknowledge the potential of Coherent Corp. (NYSE:COHR), our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than COHR but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.