Summary

• I invested in Super Micro Computer with shares and options, despite its risks, due to its critical role in AI infrastructure and potential high ROI.

• SMCI faces significant risks, including potential accounting issues and a competitive market, but its partnerships and revenue projections make it a calculated risk for me.

• I bought call options and shares, expecting Nvidia's earnings to boost SMCI, and anticipate positive catalysts if SMCI's 10-K is cleared by BDO.

• SMCI's strong revenue growth projections and undervalued stock price, coupled with big-tech CapEx spending, suggest significant upside potential, possibly exceeding $50 by February's end.

Super Micro Computer, Inc. isn't the typical company I would normally invest in, but I took a position that consists of shares and options. In full transparency, my cost basis on the shares is $33.62, while I purchased calls at a $35 strike that expires on 2/28 as a short-term play. I also wrote spreads where I purchased $32 calls expiring on 3/21 and wrote the $50 calls against them as a hedge. SMCI is down -46.51% over the past year and is very far away from its 52-week high of $122.90. Back in 2020, the SEC charged SMCI and its former CFO with accounting violations, and in August 2024, Seeking Alpha reported on a new short report from Hindenburg Research that discussed similar ideas. This isn't normally my cup of tea, but SMCI is generating real revenue and real profit, as its products are critical to the A.I. build-out. On 2/11, SMCI delivered their preliminary Q2 2025 results, and when I dug through the numbers, this investment looked like a risk worth taking for me. I believe there is an opportunity for a large ROI in both the short and long term with SMCI, and this is a calculated risk I am taking.

Seeking Alpha

Risks to investing in SMCI

Investing in SMCI comes with risk factors that everyone should be aware of. Investors should do their own research because SMCI could very easily retrace back down to its 52-week lows. SMCI hasn't delivered its 2024 10-K and didn't even report its official numbers for Q2 2025. I am willing to take a chance on SMCI because the potential outweighs the risks for me, which may not be the case for others. SMCI operates in a competitive market and competes against companies like Dell Technologies Inc. (DELL), Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE), and Pure Storage, Inc. (PSTG). SMCI may not keep up with cutting-edge technology which could make their servers, storage systems, and liquid cooling equipment inferior to other products which could negatively impact revenue. There is also a chance that the CapEx spending on A.I. infrastructure will slow down, and if it does, fewer of SMCI's products will be needed. SMCI is not a sure thing, and there is a lot more risk regarding this investment than other companies I write about.

Why I bought a mixture of call options and shares

I normally write covered calls against my positions to generate income, but in this case, I decided to purchase call options and call spreads on SMCI in addition to shares. I purchased the shares because I feel the company is undervalued, and as it moves higher, I plan on writing covered calls against my position to manufacture income. I purchased naked calls that expire on 2/28 because NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) reports on Wednesday 2/26, and I believe they are going to beat on the top and bottom line due to the amount of capital that was spent on CapEx in Q4 by Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN), Microsoft Corporation (MSFT), Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) (GOOGL), and Meta Platforms, Inc. (META). If NVDA comes out with a big beat and strong guidance, I believe it will become a tide that lifts all ships and drags SMCI higher. If SMCI delivers the 10-K for 2024 and their new accounting firm issues an all-clear statement, that could be another short-term catalyst, and this needs to happen before 2/25 otherwise, SMCI faces getting delisted. I also purchased call spreads, which means I bought calls at a $32 strike price expiring on 3/21 and sold the $50 calls against it to lower my cost basis. I did this because they were relatively inexpensive, and I got an extra month before they expire. The calls and call spreads are my short-term investments on SMCI, and if things go well over the next several weeks, the shares I purchased will likely become a longer-term investment position in the portfolio.

Why I am getting bullish after the preliminary Q2 report

On the earnings call, Michael Staiger, the VP of Investor Relations and Corporate Development, started by saying SMCI would not address questions regarding the delay in the 2024 10-K or the quarterly 10-Q that were due. Directly after his opening remarks, Charles Liang (SMCI's CEO) disclosed that SMCI's finance team and BDO, who is their new auditor, have been engaged in completing the outstanding audit. He provided some clarity on what to expect and indicated that based on the work that has taken place, all outstanding documents should be filed by the deadline of 2/25/25. SMCI has filled senior-level positions across its communication, operations, finance, legal, and compliance departments over the past two quarters and is in the process of hiring a new CFO and CCO. Mr. Liang also emphasized that the special committee that was put in place found no evidence to support the previous auditing firm resigning from their engagement. If SMCI can deliver its 2024 10-K and other required files by the 25th and gets a clean bill of health from BDO, I think its share price will react favorably to the news.

Meta Platforms, Inc. ((META), Alphabet Inc. ((GOOG)) (GOOGL), Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN), and Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) allocated just over $217 billion toward their CapEx budgets in 2024. On the recent earnings calls from AMZN, MSFT, GOOGL, and META, we learned that none of these companies are taking their foot off the gas, and they will collectively be spending $320 billion on CapEx during the 2025 fiscal year. This is an increase of $102.73 billion YoY, and MSFT is already halfway through its fiscal year, where they plan on spending $80 billion on CapEx for A.I. and data centers. AMZN came over the top and announced their plans to spend over $100 billion on CapEx, which makes me believe that on the 2025 annual call this summer from MSFT, they will have no choice but to either maintain their current CapEx budget or increase it to compete with AMZN. This could also lead GOOGL and META to increase their CapEx spending in 2026, which is very bullish for NVDA and SMCI. Outside of the big 4, Oracle Corporation (ORCL) discussed on their Q2 earnings call that they needed to expand 66 of their current data centers and build an additional 100 data centers due to their contracted demand. If none of these companies are slowing down, then we should see increased levels of NVDA chips being shipped while more infrastructure spending is allocated toward SMCI.

Steven Fiorillo, Seeking Alpha

SMCI has several key opportunities that can drive its forward growth. SMCI's partnership with NVDA is critical as they have already begun shipping air-cooled and liquid-cooled systems for NVIDIA Blackwell products. We learned on the conference call that volume shipments have already commenced for air-cooled 10U and liquid-cooled 4U NVIDIA B200 HGX systems, while NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 racks are operational. SMCI has been a choice partner of NVDA, and this allows them to have a first-to-market advantage, which could reinforce SMCI's revenue projections as they are a critical provider of infrastructure equipment throughout the data center space. SMCI expanded its total liquid-cooled data center infrastructure solutions as it shipped more than 3,000 DLC racks in 2024, which comprised roughly 70% of the DLC market. SMCI also offers customers on-site deployment, cabling, and servicing, which can provide additional revenue and be a critical reason why companies choose SMCI over someone else.

The preliminary Q2 earnings data was very promising as SMCI finished 2024 generating $14.94 billion in revenue, and they are projecting that they will end the 2025 fiscal year generating between $23.5 billion and $25 billion. This would be a YoY increase of $8.56 billion or 57.27% from the amount of revenue generated in the 2024 fiscal year if SMCI delivers on the low end of its guidance. They also indicated that they are paving the way to generate $40 billion in revenue during the 2026 fiscal year, which starts in July. This is very bullish to me, considering they are expecting to increase revenue by 57.27% this year and potentially 70.21% next year.

Steven Fiorillo, Seeking Alpha

SMCI generated $14.94 billion in revenue and $1.21 billion in net income during their 2024 fiscal year, which puts their profit margin at 8.08%. Assuming that their margins stay the same and SMCI comes in at the low end of their 2025 guidance, they would generate $23.5 billion in revenue and $1.9 billion in net income. Based on their fully diluted share count of approximately 642 million shares on a GAAP accounting basis, SMCI could potentially generate $2.96 of EPS for the 2025 fiscal year. This would be a YoY increase of $0.79 or 36.37% compared to the $2.17 of EPS SMCI generated in 2024. The analyst community is only expecting SMCI to generate $2.62 of EPS for the 2025 fiscal year and then grow EPS by 42.94% in the 2026 fiscal year to $3.74. The analyst community is only expecting $33.2 billion of revenue in 2026, which is well below the vision SMCI provided in their remarks. SMCI looks inexpensive based on the analyst expectations as it is trading at 15.16 times 2025 earnings and 10.6 times 2026 earnings.

Seeking Alpha

Conclusion

SMCI has a fair amount of risk associated with it, but this could break out hard to the upside in the next 2-3 weeks. We have already seen a strong upward move as shares have appreciated roughly 40% over the past month. Based on the numbers, I think SMCI is a risk worth taking because if NVDA beats earnings and delivers strong guidance, it would help solidify SMCI's guidance. SMCI's short interest rate is also 13.17%, and after the recent move, they may need to start covering. SMCI has a lot of potential growth on the horizon and trades at a multiple that seems depressed for the amount of revenue and profitability they're able to generate. When I look at the CapEx spending across big-tech and NVDA's revenue growth, I think that SMCI will experience significant revenue growth over the next 2 years. I wouldn't be surprised if shares of SMCI exceed $50 by the end of February as long as they get a clean bill of health from BDO.