Institutional Research

Bernstein's real-time refinery tracker estimates roughly 2–3 million bopd of Russian capacity is currently on fire and about 4 million bopd has been hit in the past month. It argues that absent a Russia-Ukraine peace deal or truce, continued disruption should support refined-product prices, refiners and integrated oil companies.

• Satellite imagery and AI web-scraping corroborate approximately 2–3 million bopd of capacity currently on fire.
• About 4 million bopd of Russian refining capacity has reportedly been hit within the past month.
• The reported outage scale represents roughly 2–3% of global refining currently affected and 4% hit over the past month.
• Russia's refined-product export restrictions are described as tightening global markets and lifting product prices and crack spreads.
• Bernstein sees ExxonMobil as an Outperform and Chevron as Market-Perform in this context.

Bernstein sees recovering China AI-server shipments from 2H26 as local accelerator supply ramps and superpod architectures proliferate. The report maps beneficiaries across optical engines, lasers and fiber, switches, server integration, substrates and PCBs.

• Domestic NPO products are largely in validation and sampling, with volume production targeted for 2H27.
• Huawei’s Atlas 960E SuperPoD is designed for 4,096 NPUs and uses 5,500 7.2T optical engines in place of 48,000 800G modules.
• The report estimates Huawei Ascend 910C rack cost per accelerator at about US$25,000, versus more than US$45,000 for an NVIDIA GB200 rack.
• China AI-server demand is expected to recover in 2H26 as local chip capacity improves despite earlier GPU-export restrictions.
• Bernstein identifies opportunities for interconnect suppliers, switch vendors, server OEM/ODMs, ABF substrate makers and advanced PCB suppliers.

The report shifts FDXF estimates to a calendar-year basis and lowers the target price from $186 to $171. Goldman Sachs still expects operational improvement from 2H27 and sees a path to an 85% operating ratio by 2029.

• Calendar-year adjusted EPS estimates are $4.10/$4.65/$5.85/$7.10 for 2026-2029.
• Year-on-year operating-ratio improvement is now expected to begin in 3Q27, later than previously modeled.
• The report forecasts an 84.9% operating ratio in 2029, broadly meeting the company’s 85% target.
• Higher-yield revenue, scale and capacity are presented as the main long-term earnings drivers.
• The $171 12-month target uses an unchanged 32.0x P/E multiple on updated Q5-Q8 EPS of $5.31.

Bernstein finds that Chinese battery-supply-chain companies remain materially more optimistic than the market on demand through 2030. ESS, commercial vehicles and tighter competitive capacity are expected to offset weak Chinese passenger-EV growth.

• Visited companies reported roughly 80–90% or higher utilization and expect 20–30% battery-demand CAGR over the next three years.
• ESS demand rose 100% this year; companies expect 30–50% growth next year and more than 20% CAGR through 2030.
• Commercial-vehicle battery demand is growing above 60% year-on-year, with penetration above 20%.
• China passenger-EV demand may remain subdued into 2027, increasing OEM pressure on battery pricing.
• China's planned restriction on new capacity beyond 2028 could support longer-term profitability and industry consolidation.
• Solid-state battery commercialization at vehicle scale is generally not expected until around 2030, while sodium-ion is entering commercialization.

JPMorgan’s September Asia Energy & Chemicals update finds tightening diesel supply and recovering PTA utilization supportive for refining and PX exposure. The report remains cautious on broader chemicals demand, polyester utilization and MDI/TDI margins.

• Asia diesel cracks rose 40% in September and exceeded US$90/bbl after Russia extended its diesel-export ban through October.
• China PTA utilization recovered to 71%, supporting a 3QTD PX-naphtha spread of US$295/t, up 12% quarter-on-quarter.
• China MEG port inventories fell to a record low of 120kt, but new and restarted capacity could add supply.
• JPMorgan says China’s 2026YTD apparent demand is weak across many chemicals and polyester utilization is only about 75%.
• The firm continues to prefer PetroChina, Sinocera and Wanhua in China; SK Innovation over S-Oil in Korea; and selected Taiwan refiners and chemical producers.

Bernstein sees the next wave of Chinese industrial globalization in emerging robotics and material-processing equipment. Technology parity and the degree of customer-system integration determine both the timing and pace of overseas penetration.

• Overseas revenue contribution ranges from 8% to 72% across key Chinese industrial segments.
• Emerging robotics and standalone equipment may reach globalization inflection points sooner than automation components.
• Overseas gross margins are 3–23 percentage points above domestic margins for the same companies.
• Inovance's overseas revenue contribution is about 6%, but Bernstein sees long-term potential to exceed 40% through a gradual process.

Goldman Sachs' tracker points to a 30% week-on-week increase in planned Port of Los Angeles TEUs next week, followed by a 1% decline two weeks out. The institution remains constructive on a medium- to longer-term US transport recovery, but cautions that tariff uncertainty and volatile trade flows can distort weekly signals.

• China-to-US laden vessels and TEUs fell 5% week on week but remained 5% above the prior year.
• Planned LA imports fell 8% in the latest week but are indicated to rise 30% next week and remain 40% higher year on year.
• Ocean container rates rose 3.5% week on week and were 3.7 times higher year on year.
• West Coast truckload availability declined 24% week on week and 37% year on year, while ex-fuel spot rates were 11% higher year on year.
• Goldman Sachs sees volume growth, especially higher-margin commercial and manufacturing freight, as central to an eventual transport earnings recovery.

Beijing SAMR has opened investigations into Meituan, Alibaba travel services, Tongcheng and Tujia under competition and e-commerce laws. Nomura views these cases as less consequential than the central SAMR investigation of Trip.com, though merchant-facing rectification remains possible.

• The investigations were announced on 19 September and cite the Anti-Unfair Competition Law and E-Commerce Law.
• Nomura believes the cases are likely focused on platforms’ dealings with travel merchants.
• The investigated platforms have smaller market shares than Trip.com, making a monopolistic-practices finding less likely in Nomura’s view.
• Potential remedies could include changes to traffic-allocation mechanisms; any penalties are expected to be materially smaller than major anti-monopoly fines.

UBS argues that copper’s ex-US market remains tight as tariff-driven US stockpiling, constrained mine supply and resilient demand offset near-term concern about elevated prices and positioning. A no-tariff outcome is the principal downside scenario, while the firm favors copper equities with earnings catalysts even without further copper-price upside.

• LME three-month copper held above US$14,000/t after recovering from the 10 September tariff-delay sell-off.
• A no-tariff outcome could cause more than 10% copper-price downside for three to six months, according to UBS.
• US visible copper inventories exceeded 800kt and represented about 80% of global visible inventories, while China and rest-of-world stocks were critically low.
• UBS forecasts 1.2% mine-supply growth in 2027 after a 5% disruption allowance.
• Top equity picks are Anglo American, Teck, First Quantum, Freeport-McMoRan and Hudbay Minerals.

The report argues that Huawei has used LogicFolding on a 7nm-class DUV process to deliver 3nm-class multicore performance. It identifies SMIC, NAURA and Piotech as key domestic beneficiaries of potential adoption.

• Kirin 9050 Pro’s multicore performance is reported to exceed Apple A17 Pro and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 despite 7nm-class manufacturing.
• LogicFolding reduces power at equivalent performance and enables higher performance through stacked design and more parallel compute resources.
• The report estimates each Kirin 9050 Pro doubles logic-wafer consumption versus the planar Kirin 9030 Pro.
• Bernstein rates SMIC, NAURA and Piotech Outperform.