Three days in Boston with over twenty meetings and one dominant theme

Last week I had the privilege of attending the Stifel Cross-Sector 1×1 Conference in Boston. Two intense days at the InterContinental packed with company meetings and panel discussions spanning everything from cybersecurity and autonomous vehicles to nuclear power and geopolitics.  

As a portfolio manager, these conferences are invaluable. Financial statements and quarterly reports only tell part of the story. Sitting across the table from management, reading the room, hearing the hesitations, sensing the confidence or lack thereof, adds a dimension that no spreadsheet can replicate. The agenda was a deliberate mix: catching up with existing holdings, but with a clear focus on identifying new and interesting potential investments. Equally important was getting a genuine feel for how companies perceive the broader trends shaping their industries, how they read the US economy, and, perhaps most telling of all the mood amongst fellow investors in the room. 

The dominant theme was, unsurprisingly, AI and data centers. Virtually every conversation touched on it in some way. But what struck me most was a quiet scepticism emerging in parts of the supply chain. Not from the semiconductor companies riding the wave, but from companies further downstream. Several management teams were candid about their uncertainty: will the staggering amounts of capital being announced actually materialise into signed contracts and construction starts? Plans are overwhelming. Actual deployment is a different matter. 

The bottlenecks are becoming clearer. Energy and labor are the binding constraints on data center buildout and both are getting harder to solve, not easier. Facilities are being pushed further and further from urban centers in search of land and power, which compounds the labor problem significantly. Attracting skilled construction workers to remote locations was already difficult, and it is becoming more so now. Several companies were remarkably frank about this and the gap between announced investment and what can realistically be built and staffed is wider than the headlines suggest. 

The overall investor mood was engaged but grounded. Enthusiasm for structural themes like AI infrastructure, energy transition and defense remains high. But there is a growing recognition that execution risk is underpriced, timelines are optimistic, and the companies that will actually win are those solving the unglamorous, real-world constraints: permitting, power, and people. 

That, ultimately, is what these trips are about. Finding the signal in the noise, before it shows up in the numbers. 

Portfolio Manager
Marcus Björkstén