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>Lumen Technologies reported its fourth quarter and full-year 2025 financial results, marking a significant transition driven largely by the recent completion of its fiber-to-the-home divestiture to AT&T for $5.75 billion.</li><li>This transaction materially reshaped the company’s capital structure, reducing total debt to under $13 billion and lowering net leverage below 4x, which in turn decreased annual interest expenses by approximately $500 million compared to 2025.</li><li>Concurrently, capital expenditures are expected to decline by over $1 billion in 2026 due to ceasing fiber-to-the-home builds, enabling a strategic refocus on enterprise digital services and AI-oriented network infrastructure.</li></ul>

Lumen Technologies reported its fourth quarter and full-year 2025 financial results, marking a significant transition driven largely by the recent completion of its fiber-to-the-home divestiture to AT&T for $5.75 billion.This transaction materially reshaped the company’s capital structure, reducing total debt to under $13 billion and lowering net leverage below 4x, which in turn decreased annual interest expenses by approximately $500 million compared to 2025.Concurrently, capital expenditures are expected to decline by over $1 billion in 2026 due to ceasing fiber-to-the-home builds, enabling a strategic refocus on enterprise digital services and AI-oriented network infrastructure.

Lumen Technologies: From Legacy Decline to Digital Expansion—A High-Stakes Transformation Underway!

<ul><li>Lumen Technologies demonstrated a mixed performance in the third quarter of 2025, exhibiting areas of strength and some challenges.</li><li>The company reported financial metrics ahead of expectations, with revenue, EBITDA, and free cash flow surpassing Street consensus.</li><li>Revenue for the quarter was approximately $3.087 billion, representing a decline of 4.2% year-over-year.</li></ul>

Lumen Technologies demonstrated a mixed performance in the third quarter of 2025, exhibiting areas of strength and some challenges.The company reported financial metrics ahead of expectations, with revenue, EBITDA, and free cash flow surpassing Street consensus.Revenue for the quarter was approximately $3.087 billion, representing a decline of 4.2% year-over-year.

Lumen Technologies Elevates Enterprise Performance With Intelligent Port Systems & Rapid Interconnects; What Lies Ahead?

AI | Semiconductors | Commodities, Mint Finance

Raghav Vashisht

AI | Semiconductors | Commodities

Deep Fundamental Analysis

Mint Finance

Mint Finance's investment research blends deep fundamental analysis with technical & quant insights. Investment strategies straddle across multiple asset classes with risk management embedded into every trade to deliver an outsized reward-to-risk ratio.

Mint Finance's research is centered around three key themes. First, energy transition and climate change. Second, artificial intelligence. Third, shifting world order with its impact across politics and monetary economics.

Thematic (Sector/Industry)

<ul>
<li>Advantest disclosed its first large high‑volume ATE order for silicon photonics, guiding to at least two more years of doubling growth in this line, while holding operating margins above 44%</li>
<li>FormFactor’s results show record revenue, a 45% YoY jump in Probe Cards, a 30% increase in Foundry &amp; Logic revenue, with NVIDIA crossing the 10% customer threshold.</li>
<li>Moving on, we map how others, i.e. Teradyne, MPI, ficonTEC, Aehr, Keysight, Lumentum, etc fit around this core and which of them keep or gain structural leverage in the stack.</li>
</ul>


Advantest disclosed its first large high‑volume ATE order for silicon photonics, guiding to at least two more years of doubling growth in this line, while holding operating margins above 44%
FormFactor’s results show record revenue, a 45% YoY jump in Probe Cards, a 30% increase in Foundry &amp; Logic revenue, with NVIDIA crossing the 10% customer threshold.
Moving on, we map how others, i.e. Teradyne, MPI, ficonTEC, Aehr, Keysight, Lumentum, etc fit around this core and which of them keep or gain structural leverage in the stack.


[Part 3] What Advantest and FormFactor’s Earnings Say About CPO’s Bottleneck

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>Our outlook remains bullish following the S&amp;P 500's multi-month base breakout above 5670, alongside healthy market dynamics which have continued to improve.</li>
<li>Two weeks ago, our election day report (11/5/24) was titled "Buy the Pullback," and with the SPX/QQQ/IWM pulling back to their 20-day MAs, it's time to buy the pullback <em>again</em>.</li>
<li>We continue to expect significant upside into year-end and early 2025, and we expect support at the 20-day MAs on the aforementioned indexes (though support at 50-day MAs is possible).</li>
</ul>


Our outlook remains bullish following the S&amp;P 500's multi-month base breakout above 5670, alongside healthy market dynamics which have continued to improve.
Two weeks ago, our election day report (11/5/24) was titled "Buy the Pullback," and with the SPX/QQQ/IWM pulling back to their 20-day MAs, it's time to buy the pullback again.
We continue to expect significant upside into year-end and early 2025, and we expect support at the 20-day MAs on the aforementioned indexes (though support at 50-day MAs is possible).


Buy the Pullback Again; S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, Russell 2000 Testing Confluence of Support

Asset Allocation & Fund Positioning, Copley Fund Research

Steven Holden

Asset Allocation & Fund Positioning

Copley Fund Research

Copley Fund Research provide research and data on asset allocation among Global and Emerging Market equity funds.  The analysis details absolute and relative positioning across countries, sectors and industries together with highly granular data on single stock and single fund allocations.  The data is updated monthly with time series going back to January 2011.

Global Research - Analysis of 165 prominent Global equity funds, combined AUM $335bn
GEM Research - Analysis of 127 prominent global EM equity funds, combined AUM $250bn

Asset Allocation - Global and GEM Equity

Cross Asset Strategy

<ul>
<li>North American allocations continue to trend higher, hitting a record average weight of 58.1% across the 358 global funds in our analysis</li>
<li>North America has consistently stolen market share from other key global regions, most notably Developed Market Europe, where average fund weights have hit all-time lows of 24.24%</li>
<li>Sectors driving allocations higher are led by Energy, Health Care and Industrials with active rotation in to all 3, whilst Consumer Staples have seen signs of investor fatigue.</li>
</ul>


North American allocations continue to trend higher, hitting a record average weight of 58.1% across the 358 global funds in our analysis
North America has consistently stolen market share from other key global regions, most notably Developed Market Europe, where average fund weights have hit all-time lows of 24.24%
Sectors driving allocations higher are led by Energy, Health Care and Industrials with active rotation in to all 3, whilst Consumer Staples have seen signs of investor fatigue.


North America Hits New Highs as Global Rotation Continues

United States

Lumen Technologies, Inc. provides digital solutions for home and business premises. The Company offers communications, network security, cloud solutions, voice, and managed services. Lumen Technologies serves customers worldwide.

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Lumen Technologies (LUMN US)

Lumen Technologies: From Legacy Decline to Digital Expansion—A High-Stakes Transformation Underway!

Lumen Technologies reported its fourth quarter and full-year 2025 financial results, marking a significant transition driven largely by the recent...

Baptista Research

Lumen Technologies Elevates Enterprise Performance With Intelligent Port Systems & Rapid Interconnects; What Lies Ahead?

Lumen Technologies demonstrated a mixed performance in the third quarter of 2025, exhibiting areas of strength and some challenges. The company...

Baptista Research

[Part 3] What Advantest and FormFactor’s Earnings Say About CPO’s Bottleneck

Advantest and FormFactor see strong growth in silicon photonics and probe cards, with potential for continued expansion in the semiconductor...

Mint Finance

Buy the Pullback Again; S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, Russell 2000 Testing Confluence of Support

Buy the Pullback Again, Same as Our Election Day Report; S&P 500 $SPX, Nasdaq 100 $QQQ, Russell 2000 $IWM Testing Confluence of Support at 20-day...

Vermilion Research

North America Hits New Highs as Global Rotation Continues

North American allocations among active Global investors hit record highs, driven by Energy, Health Care and Industrials rotation.

Steven Holden

Price Gauge

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Market Cap (USDm)

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Dividend (Yield)

Lumen Technologies: From Legacy Decline to Digital Expansion—A High-Stakes Transformation Underway!

Lumen Technologies reported its fourth quarter and full-year 2025 financial results, marking a significant transition driven largely by the recent...

Baptista Research

Lumen Technologies Elevates Enterprise Performance With Intelligent Port Systems & Rapid Interconnects; What Lies Ahead?

Lumen Technologies demonstrated a mixed performance in the third quarter of 2025, exhibiting areas of strength and some challenges. The company...

Baptista Research

[Part 3] What Advantest and FormFactor’s Earnings Say About CPO’s Bottleneck

​Advantest and FormFactor see strong growth in silicon photonics and probe cards, with potential for continued expansion in the semiconductor...

Mint Finance

Buy the Pullback Again; S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, Russell 2000 Testing Confluence of Support

Buy the Pullback Again, Same as Our Election Day Report; S&P 500 $SPX, Nasdaq 100 $QQQ, Russell 2000 $IWM Testing Confluence of Support at 20-day...

Vermilion Research

North America Hits New Highs as Global Rotation Continues

North American allocations among active Global investors hit record highs, driven by Energy, Health Care and Industrials rotation.

Steven Holden

Advantest and FormFactor see strong growth in silicon photonics and probe cards, with potential for continued expansion in the semiconductor...