Astera Labs: Northland Capital Markets cuts rating to Market Perform

ALAB Northland Upgrades ALAB to Outperform, PT $350 Analyst comments: "We are upgrading ALAB based on our expectations for more positive earnings revisions and a longer-than-expected AI infrastructure spending cycle. We expect ALAB's content per rack to continue to increase, and it is positioned to gain share in switching fabric for scale-up and scale-out. ALAB is also well positioned in signal conditioning for AI infrastructure. We believe ALAB will continue to be one of the fastest-growing AI infrastructure chip companies. We had expected AI infrastructure spending to decline next year, as we did not see any incremental capital to increase spending. However, Google, Broadcom, Apollo, Blackstone, Morgan Stanley, and crypto miners have come together to fund $200 billion in AI infrastructure for Anthropic. Last week, Nvidia announced that, with Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs, and KKR, it will provide $500 billion in private capital. We think this funding will likely push the spending peak out into CY27. We believe this funding will support the AI trade." Analyst: Gus Richard