Review of Kinaxis Inc.

Q: Long term owner of KXS. Happy to be a patient long term investor as long as the investment thesis is not deteriorating. Are you seeing any signs in their numbers that KXS business is deteriorating or getting disrupted? Revenue growth, margins, new customers, any other metrics that you feel are relevant to the question.

Thanks.

Q: As one of 5i’s early subscribers, I find it a useful thought experiment to give my answer to a question before clicking on the 5i answer. I have found over the years our answers converge and so I rarely send in questions and comments. However my sense is that DeepSeek is a significant change.

On one level it is a clear lesson in the reality that, as Keynes said many decades ago, it’s real resources that matter, not money.

The American approach to AI development was that if you don’t have a $1billion you're not in the game. The Chinese have shown that if you have the pool of talent, amazing things can be done with relatively little money. The prevailing narrative that the Chinese are just copy cats was also blown out of the water. DeepSeek not only upends every assumption underlying the American approach to AI, it shows that the Chinese can out Silicon Silicon Valley and that means that, unlike in the past, China’s most talented minds will want to work for Chinese companies not American ones.

How will the Americans respond? Having staked political capital on the $500 billion Stargate, Trump and his entourage of billionaires have no choice, they will double down. We are hearing the narrative already, they are now saying that $500 million invested in DeepSeek’s advancements will produce even more amazing advancements in AI.

At a moment in history, as America consumes itself, China has taken a leap forward. Not only have they bloodied Trump, they have shaken the world in ways Napoleon could never have foreseen.

There are actually lessons to be learned in how Canada might deal with Trump but the political bobble heads and corporate Canada have actually come to believe the myths of neo-liberalism they started purveying in the 80’s, and are now incapable of rising above their paralysing fear.

Every investor has to ask, what are the implications of DeepSeek for their investments? Doubling down by the Americans will keep the party going for a while but it seems reasonable to expect a reckoning. Where would 5i look for alternatives to AI investments? Please suggest 5 US and 5 Cdn stocks that have strong balance sheets and reasonable growth prospects (without stretched valuations) that would benefit from using much less expensive AI? Also, please suggest a couple of ETF’s for Europe and China that would benefit should those markets surprise to the upside?
Mike

Q: I have money to invest and I own none of these stocks. Could you list them in order that you would buy them today.
Thanks for you help.
Dorothy