7 names off the Stage-2 earnings-call screen this week. Leading industry, EC Perf 12, Sent ≥24, ATR ≥2.5, fresh in stage (≤8 weeks, or 9-12 only if Sent ≥26, Rating ≥85, SATA not falling).
Backtest on this exact gate, 2022-2026: w13 excess 12.7% mean, 6.3% median, 63.5% hit, positive median every year. About 3-4 signals a month.
Two clean entries (week ≤8), four semis that cleared the late gate, one industrial.
$CVS wk7, ATR 3.59, Sent 25, industry pctile 100. Healthcare-services leader, fresh breakout. Call tagged guidance lift, MA margin recovery, Costvantage PBM model, deleveraging. Bear case: PBM regulation overhang and GLP-1 cost pressure are real and unresolved.
$XMTR wk7, ATR 2.51, Sent 25. Manufacturing marketplace. Tagged Siemens partnership, guidance raise, record net adds, margin expansion. Bear case: small-cap, profitability still thin, marketplace take-rate durability unproven.
$NTAP wk8, ATR 3.56, Sent 24. Storage on the AI-data tailwind, tagged demand strength and margins, with component-cost headwinds flagged in the same call. Lowest sentiment of the group and SATA ticked down, so the weakest of the two clean entries.
$CRDO wk9, ATR 2.84, SATA 9 rising, Sent 27, Rating 89. Highest-rated name here and the only 2A. AI connectivity, AEC, optical, strong guidance. The cleanest late-gate name on the inputs.
$AMD wk11, ATR 4.27, Sent 26, SATA rising. Data-center and server-CPU share story. Tagged share gains and TAM expansion, with supply tightness and component cost as the offset. Most liquid name in the basket.
$ALAB wk9, ATR 4.22, Sent 26. PCIe/CXL/optical interconnect into hyperscalers. Pure AI-infrastructure connectivity. Bear case: valuation and hyperscaler capex concentration.
$SITM wk11, ATR 2.71, Sent 28 (highest sentiment of all seven), SATA rising. Precision timing into data center and optical. Tagged guidance raise and margin expansion.
Honest risk on the basket: four of seven are semis. Equal-weighting it is half a semiconductor bet. The two non-semi entries (
$CVS $XMTR ) and the industrial read carry the diversification.