As I mentioned last week, I started buying
$CRWV.
I want to go deeper because I think
$CRWV may be one of the only major AI infrastructure names where the market is still pricing in a serious amount of failure.
The bear case is easy to understand:
1) Massive debt.
2) Massive capital expenditures.
3) Heavy interest expense.
4) Customer concentration.
5) Execution risk.
But stopping the analysis at the debt completely misses what
$CRWV is building and the contracted demand supporting that investment.
$CRWV ended Q1 with $98.8B in remaining performance obligations, up from just $14.7B one year ago.
Add another $0.6B of estimated future revenue from committed contracts, and total revenue backlog reaches $99.4B, up 284% YoY.
Backlog can include amounts subject to future delivery and capacity requirements. RPO is the stronger accounting measure because it represents contracted obligations that have not yet been recognized as revenue.
$CRWV generated only $2.08B of revenue in Q1, yet it now has nearly $99B of contracted future revenue sitting ahead of it.
The market is valuing the company based on today’s debt load while the business is being built around tomorrow’s revenue base.
And the backlog is not entirely pushed into some distant future:
Around 36% is expected to be recognized within 24 months, another 39% between months 25 and 48, and 25% beyond 48 months.
That gives
$CRWV something most hypergrowth infrastructure companies do not have: long-term revenue visibility before the capacity is fully online.
The demand is also becoming more diversified.
$CRWV signed more than $40B of new customer commitments during Q1, including a new $21B Meta commitment, a multi-year Anthropic agreement and expanded relationships with Cohere, Jane Street and Mistral.
This is why I do not view the debt as automatically bearish.
$CRWV is not borrowing heavily because demand is disappearing. It is raising capital because customers are asking for more compute than its current infrastructure can provide.
The company has now surpassed 1 GW of active power, secured more than 3.5 GW of contracted power, and believes it can exceed 8 GW by 2030. It also secured an $8.5B investment-grade-rated delayed-draw facility and received a $2B equity investment from
$NVDA.
The risk:
$CRWV spent $6.8B on capital expenditures in Q1 alone. Interest expense reached $536M, equal to roughly 26% of quarterly revenue, and the company recorded a $740M net loss.
The thesis is that revenue growth can eventually outpace the growth in financing costs.
$CRWV still produced $1.16B in adjusted EBITDA during Q1, representing a 56% margin, despite being in one of the most aggressive infrastructure expansion cycles in the market.
As the contracted capacity becomes active,
$CRWV can recognize more of that RPO as revenue without needing corporate expenses to grow at the same rate.
That is where the operating leverage can eventually appear.
The real questions are:
Can it deploy capacity on schedule?
Can it convert the $98.8B RPO into revenue?
Can revenue growth eventually reduce interest expense as a percentage of sales?
Can it diversify customers while protecting margins?
High risk, but I think the potential reward is being underestimated.
I’ve been really focused on adding cash into my swing trading account.
My current swing trades are:
$IREN
$CRWV
$NU
Here is why I like all three:
$IREN:
- Targeting up to $4.4B in annualized run-rate revenue
- More than 4.5 GW of secured power
- 810 MW operational
- 2.1 GW under construction
- Recently secured $3.65B in GPU financing
- Added a planned 800 MW Australian campus
The opportunity is massive, but so is the execution risk. After the recent pullback, I like the risk-to-reward for a swing.
$CRWV:
- Q1 revenue: $2.08B, up 112% YoY
- Revenue backlog: $99.4B, up 284% YoY
- Adjusted EBITDA: $1.16B
- Adjusted EBITDA margin: 56%
- More than 1 GW of active power
- Targeting more than 8 GW by 2030
The debt and spending remain the biggest risks, but nearly $100B of backlog gives the company incredible revenue visibility. I think
$CRWV could see another major rerating if it continues converting that demand into revenue.
$NU:
- More than 135M customers
- Added roughly 4M customers during Q1
- Q1 revenue: $5.3B
- Q1 net income: $871M
- ROE: 29%
- Net interest income: $3.25B
- Activity rate: 83%
- Efficiency ratio improved to 17.6%
The fundamentals continue getting stronger while sentiment and macro concerns have pressured the stock. That disconnect is exactly why I have been adding.
So my swing account currently gives me exposure to two different setups:
AI infrastructure growth through
$IREN and
$CRWV.
Fundamental mispricing through
$NU.
Three higher-risk positions, but each one has numbers supporting the thesis.