Chart of the Week: Spending Like It’s 1998

Last week, we looked at a chart that suggested today’s AI-driven market mirrors the early days of the dotcom boom.

The visual comparison was compelling. But as we discussed, the underlying economics are very different.

This week’s chart takes that argument a step further.

And in my view, it’s a far more accurate snapshot of where we actually are today.

Heavy Spending But Rational Valuations

Our chart this week compares two things across time.

First, how much the tech sector is spending on capital expenditures as a percentage of U.S. GDP.

Second, the average price-to-earnings multiples of the dominant tech companies in each cycle.

Here’s the chart:

The purple line tracks tech sector capex as a share of GDP. In layman’s terms, it shows how aggressively the industry is investing in physical infrastructure — things like data centers, chips, networking gear and energy capacity.

The black shaded area shows valuation multiples.

In 2000, the dominant players — Cisco, Oracle and Microsoft — were trading at nosebleed P/E ratios. The spending surge collided with extreme valuations, and eventually the bubble burst.

Today, capex as a percentage of GDP is climbing back toward late-1990s levels. Meaning, hyperscalers are spending like it’s 1998.

But this time, their valuations are nowhere near the same.

As we discussed last week, the spending boom of the dotcom era was broad and speculative. Capital flooded into thousands of startups, but many of them had little revenue, and even fewer had profits.

Today’s AI capex is concentrated among a handful of deeply profitable companies like Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOG), Meta (Nasdaq: META) and Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA).

These companies are generating tens of billions in annual profit while they deploy capital into AI infrastructure.

Microsoft alone produces over $100 billion in net income annually. Nvidia’s data center revenue has exploded as AI demand accelerates. And Alphabet and Amazon are monetizing AI through cloud platforms that already serve millions of enterprise customers.

These massive companies are pouring billions of dollars into data centers, GPUs and AI infrastructure today. But unlike 1999, all this spending isn’t based on hope alone.

It’s happening because AI workloads demand it.

What’s more, the market is pricing these companies at multiples far below the triple-digit P/Es we saw during the dotcom era.

Of course, there’s still risk in today’s AI buildout. Companies can overspend, and investors can get too excited about future growth.

We’re seeing some of that excitement recalibrating now, as tech stocks have been hit hard this year.

But the combination of strong profitability and more reasonable valuations among the companies leading the AI infrastructure build paints a very different picture from the dotcom bubble.

Here’s My Take

Today’s chart tells a different story than last week’s.

Yes, tech capex is running hot. It’s approaching levels we haven’t seen since the late 1990s, so it’s understandable that it’s making investors nervous.

But the other half of the equation matters just as much.

Today’s AI leaders aren’t speculative startups trading at 100X earnings. They’re trillion-dollar companies generating record profits and deploying capital into infrastructure that they’re already monetizing.

That doesn’t look like 1998 to me.

It looks more like the early innings of a structural buildout.

And if AI adoption continues at its current pace, today’s capex surge might prove to be the foundation for the next decade of productivity growth.

Which means the companies doing the heavy lifting today could remain market leaders for many years to come.

Regards,

Ian KingChief Strategist, Banyan Hill Publishing

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