Independent research on the U.S. markets, Baptista Research

Baptista Research

Independent research on the U.S. markets

Baptista Research is an independent financial research house focused on the U.S. markets. We provide equity research as well as credit research reports on the top-listed U.S. companies with most of our focus on technology, consumer goods and services, automobiles, industrials, oil and gas, pharma, and healthcare. Our research has served more than 3000 institutional investors including mutual funds, hedge funds, banks, family offices, and various buy-side firms. We operate a research subscription service where institutions, as well as retail investors, can have priority access to all our research. We also have a wide distribution of our research reports across some of the top global financial platforms. Apart from equity research and credit research, we also provide advisory services with respect to mergers & acquisitions (M&A), private equity/ venture capital fundraising, valuation reports, and investment management services for corporates.
Baptista Research is owned and managed by Ishan Majumdar, an ex-Venture Capitalist/ Investment Banker, a Chartered Accountant, and a Masters’ degree holder in Management from HEC Paris. Ishan has nearly a decade of experience in Mergers and Acquisitions, Leveraged Buyouts (LBOs), Venture Capital Investing, Corporate Strategy, and Valuation in front-office roles at the likes of BNP Paribas CIB, Credit Agricole CIB, Groupe Danone, and TIW Private Equity. He has worked on and closed multiple acquisition deals, leveraged buyouts, and start-up investment transactions.

Equity Bottom-Up

<ul><li>CrowdStrike has continued its aggressive push to expand its AI and identity protection capabilities with the announcement of its acquisition of privately held startup SGNL, in a deal reportedly valued at $740 million.</li><li>The transaction, expected to close in Q1 of CrowdStrike’s fiscal 2027, will be paid predominantly in cash with a smaller stock component subject to vesting conditions.</li><li>SGNL, an AI-native identity security company, had raised $30 million in a Series A funding round as recently as February 2025.</li></ul>

CrowdStrike has continued its aggressive push to expand its AI and identity protection capabilities with the announcement of its acquisition of privately held startup SGNL, in a deal reportedly valued at $740 million.The transaction, expected to close in Q1 of CrowdStrike’s fiscal 2027, will be paid predominantly in cash with a smaller stock component subject to vesting conditions.SGNL, an AI-native identity security company, had raised $30 million in a Series A funding round as recently as February 2025.

CrowdStrike Acquires SGNL: Is This the AI Era’s Defining Cybersecurity Deal?

<ul><li>CrowdStrike, Inc. delivered results that reflected strong operational momentum alongside an expanding strategic footprint across cybersecurity domains tied to artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure, identity, and security operations.</li><li>The quarter was characterized by accelerated net new annual recurring revenue, broad-based platform adoption, and improved profitability metrics, while also highlighting areas where execution risk and cost sensitivity remain relevant as the company scales.</li><li>From an investment thesis perspective, CrowdStrike, Inc. continues to benefit from its single-platform architecture, which integrates endpoint, cloud, identity, and security operations capabilities into a unified data and analytics layer.</li></ul>

CrowdStrike, Inc. delivered results that reflected strong operational momentum alongside an expanding strategic footprint across cybersecurity domains tied to artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure, identity, and security operations.The quarter was characterized by accelerated net new annual recurring revenue, broad-based platform adoption, and improved profitability metrics, while also highlighting areas where execution risk and cost sensitivity remain relevant as the company scales.From an investment thesis perspective, CrowdStrike, Inc. continues to benefit from its single-platform architecture, which integrates endpoint, cloud, identity, and security operations capabilities into a unified data and analytics layer.

CrowdStrike Bets on Falcon Flex: Is This Subscription Model a Game-Changer or a Hidden Risk?

Asian Hedge Fund Manager, Long Short Equity, Macro

David Mudd

Cross Asset Strategy

<ul>
<li>Anthropic faces a potential "Down Round" in its IPO slated for later this year.  The dynamics of the AI sector have deteriorated substantially since the company announced its IPO filing.</li>
<li>The private market valuation, based on funding rounds, tripled between February and May this year, adding roughly $600 billion to its market value. The company participates in AI circular financing.</li>
<li>Valuation compression, competition from Chinese open-source models, regulatory challenges, slowing token usage, and market share loss are pre-IPO challenges for the company.</li>
</ul>


Anthropic faces a potential "Down Round" in its IPO slated for later this year.  The dynamics of the AI sector have deteriorated substantially since the company announced its IPO filing.
The private market valuation, based on funding rounds, tripled between February and May this year, adding roughly $600 billion to its market value. The company participates in AI circular financing.
Valuation compression, competition from Chinese open-source models, regulatory challenges, slowing token usage, and market share loss are pre-IPO challenges for the company.


ANTHROPIC IPO: Will Investors Accept a Down Round?

Market Intelligence, ORTEX

ORTEX Market Intel

Market Intelligence

Global Financial Data and Analytics Platform

ORTEX

ORTEX is a global financial data and analytics platform providing real-time securities lending and short interest data, index rebalance data, holdings and insider transactions, trading signals, corporate actions and news,  stock machine learning and factor scores and other analytics. The majority of the data are downloadable and accessible through APIs.

<ul><li>Short interest built across cybersecurity names this week, with CRWD leading single-stock moves as analysts cut targets and insiders sold.</li><li>Broad ETF hedges unwound sharply — IJH and CIBR each posted double-digit short interest drops.</li><li>Borrow markets tightened in pockets, with MSFT seeing its sharpest SI spike in months.</li></ul>

Short interest built across cybersecurity names this week, with CRWD leading single-stock moves as analysts cut targets and insiders sold.Broad ETF hedges unwound sharply — IJH and CIBR each posted double-digit short interest drops.Borrow markets tightened in pockets, with MSFT seeing its sharpest SI spike in months.

Weekly Digest: Short Sellers Reload Into Cyber, Flee ETF Hedges

Technical Analyst, Vermilion Research

Joe Jasper

Technical Analyst

Technical and Quantitative Research

Vermilion Research

Vermilion’s objective is to deliver timely, actionable, and unique technical research to professional investors through the application of our various technical indicators.

Our research strategists seek to highlight securities which we believe are at major inflection points, based on our various technical and quantitative indicators, and offer asymmetric risk/return profiles. Our unique research methodology, centered on relative strength, enables our strategists to deliver superior investment recommendations.

Our process begins by organizing the universe of actively traded stocks into discrete sectors, then into industry groups. We then apply our technical and quantitative tools to identify developing price trends. Once attractive trends are identified within a selected sector or group, we screen for individual stocks which we believe offer the best risk/reward profile. We provide a historical perspective that often reveals, through our long-term charts, how price patterns often repeat themselves over time.

Technical Analysis

<ul>
<li>We remain bullish (as of last week's 4/21/26 Compass) on the S&amp;P 500 (SPX), Nasdaq 100 (QQQ), and Russell 2000 (IWM). We discussed last week to add exposure to growth/Technology.</li>
<li>RS on the cap-weighted XLK is now breaking above its 2025 highs and we are upgrading Technology to overweight</li>
<li>We have remained overweight semiconductors (SMH, NVDA, TSM, CIEN, etc.) and memory (SNDK, WDC, STX, MU) ever since our 6/17/25 Compass, and these remain our favorite areas within Tech.</li>
</ul>


We remain bullish (as of last week's 4/21/26 Compass) on the S&amp;P 500 (SPX), Nasdaq 100 (QQQ), and Russell 2000 (IWM). We discussed last week to add exposure to growth/Technology.
RS on the cap-weighted XLK is now breaking above its 2025 highs and we are upgrading Technology to overweight
We have remained overweight semiconductors (SMH, NVDA, TSM, CIEN, etc.) and memory (SNDK, WDC, STX, MU) ever since our 6/17/25 Compass, and these remain our favorite areas within Tech.


Upgrading Technology to Overweight; Adding on Any Pullbacks

United States

CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. provides cybersecurity products and services to stop breaches. The Company offers cloud-delivered protection across endpoints, cloud workloads, identity and data, and leading threat intelligence, managed security services, IT operations management, threat hunting, Zero Trust identity protection, and log management. CrowdStrike serves customers worldwide.

Price Gauge
52-week Range	0.00 - 0.00
Market Cap (USDm)	0.00
P/E	0.00
Dividend (Yield)	0.00

Crowdstrike Holdings (CRWD US)

CrowdStrike Acquires SGNL: Is This the AI Era’s Defining Cybersecurity Deal?

CrowdStrike has continued its aggressive push to expand its AI and identity protection capabilities with the announcement of its acquisition of...

Baptista Research

CrowdStrike Bets on Falcon Flex: Is This Subscription Model a Game-Changer or a Hidden Risk?

CrowdStrike, Inc. delivered results that reflected strong operational momentum alongside an expanding strategic footprint across cybersecurity...

Baptista Research

ANTHROPIC IPO: Will Investors Accept a Down Round?

Anthropic faces a potential "Down Round" in its IPO slated for later this year. The dynamics of the AI sector have deteriorated substantially...

David Mudd

Weekly Digest: Short Sellers Reload Into Cyber, Flee ETF Hedges

Short interest built across cybersecurity names this week, with CRWD leading single-stock moves as analysts cut targets and insiders sold. Broad...

ORTEX Market Intel

Upgrading Technology to Overweight; Adding on Any Pullbacks

Upgrading Technology $XLK to Overweight; Adding on Pullbacks. $NVDA $MU $CRWD $CDNS $CRML $UAMY $MP $LAC $SLB $BKR $HAL $ANDE $REX $GPRE $ALTO

Vermilion Research

Price Gauge

52-week Range

Market Cap (USDm)

P/E

Dividend (Yield)