An update on expectations for capital expenditures from cloud companies from Bank of America brings the key takeaway that spending breadth is growing beyond the hefty footprint of Amazon Web Services.
Overall the tracker points to growth in capex among the world's top seven hyperscalers of 21% in 2021, to $128B (or up 20% to $138B including Apple).
That's a deceleration from last year's 37% growth. However, BofA notes that ex-Amazon.com, "super 7" capex is expected to grow 33% vs. just 9% a year ago. And limiting the look to the second half, ex-Amazon spending could surge 42%.
That broadening is potentially a positive for merchant semiconductors, it says, since Amazon has been most active in insourcing "specific processors/networking gear (AWS Graviton, Nitro)."
As for 2022, capital intensity of 9% at the super 7 would mark the lowest levels since 2017, it notes - indicating potentially conservative estimates for spending, particularly amid secular trends like AI/machine learning and 5G driving growing data consumption. Cloud sales at major vendors (AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure) are expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 32% from 2020 through 2022, but the capex outlook is "muted," suggesting the Street may not appreciate the investments needed.
And its top three picks for secular cloud-driven growth among semiconductor companies are NVIDIA Corp, AMD and Marvell Technology - though it notes there are "multiple reasons" to like the names. All three can outperform in an environment of decelerating growth for large markets including PCs, automobiles and smartphones.
"These stocks are not exposed to cyclical unit growth and volatile memory capex, but instead benefit from specific product cycles and share gains across AI, cloud computing, gaming, networking, enterprise, and 5G infrastructure," Vivek Arya and team write, "which in our view limits their impact from macro swings and supports their best-in-semis ~20% sales/25%-plus EPS growth potential through 2023E (vs. semi industry average 7% sales/10% EPS growth)."
And while industry supply will continue to be an issue in the second half, scale and share growth means these three companies are "critical customers" of their foundry partners, and supply will continue to steadily improve.
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