Pieter Slegers — 10 Stocks That Crushed 2025 (Compounding Quality)

One-line take: the archive's clearest example of a pundit publishing the results of a style he does not practise, and labelling it. Readers' picks averaged +17.3% in 2025 against the S&P 500's +16%, and the ten best ran from Eos Energy +107.2% to Olema Pharmaceuticals +348.8% — a list made almost entirely of AI-infrastructure, defence, space, nuclear-fuel and clinical-stage biotech names. Slegers publishes it and then disowns it twice: up front — "on average, (way) more risk was involved with these companies" — and in the conclusion: "These are not the type of companies we usually cover at Compounding Quality. Most businesses on this list are cyclical by nature. They are exposed to commodity prices, capital cycles, technological shifts, or regulatory changes. That makes them fundamentally different from the high-quality compounders we typically focus on." The one name that overlaps with the house universe is Micron (+226.8%), and it is the same name the July 2026 letter makes the archive's first argued negative on — memory as a commodity peak. The AI-infrastructure pattern is stated by the author himself midway down: Nebius and IREN both re-rated on multi-billion-dollar Microsoft contracts ("Sounds exactly like Nebius, right?"), and the question "do you start to see a correlation between AI and the best performers of the year?" is left hanging. Read this page as a base-rate exhibit, not as a set of ideas: no valuation, moat test or quality score appears anywhere in it.

1. Stocks & names mentioned

Every row is a reader-submitted pick reported on performance, ordered by 2025 return. Stance is Neutral throughout: no business is endorsed, no valuation is given, and the issue's own conclusion explicitly distances the house from the whole list. Research legend: QT Qualtrim · SA Seeking Alpha · STK Stock Analysis. Written post with no timestamps — the At link opens the article.

Ticker	Name	Research	View	What he said	At
OLMA	Olema Pharmaceuticals	QT · SA · STK · FA	Neutral	#1, +348.8% — "the best-performing partner pick of the year." A clinical-stage biotech in targeted breast-cancer therapy: "Olema Pharmaceuticals grabbed attention because it could be the next big cancer drug success. The company's lead breast cancer therapy called palazestrant… showed promising early trial data." No revenue, no valuation and no view — the archetype of the risk the introduction warns about.	read ↗
IREN	IREN Ltd	QT · SA · STK · FA	Neutral	#2, +261.1% — data centres on low-cost renewable power, "shifted from being known mainly as a Bitcoin miner to becoming a fast-growing AI cloud infrastructure provider." The re-rating has a single named cause: "a multi-year AI cloud contract with Microsoft worth about $9.7 billion. Sounds exactly like Nebius, right?" Slegers' own aside follows: "do you start to see a correlation between AI and the best performers of the year?"	read ↗
ASTS	AST SpaceMobile	QT · SA · STK · FA	Neutral	#3, +235.6% — a satellite network letting standard smartphones connect directly to space with no extra hardware. "In 2025, the company proved this idea works by making real two-way calls from space," with AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone and Rakuten as partners. The stated driver is belief rather than earnings: "As AST moved from testing to the early phase of commercial launches, confidence in future revenues grew quickly."	read ↗
MU	Micron Technology	QT · SA · STK · FA	Neutral	#4, +226.8% — "Micron sold out its production through 2025 and beyond… The stock surge is a result of revenue and margin expansion. In 2025, demand for high-bandwidth memory exploded. Pricing improved, utilization rose, and Micron's earnings power surprised even optimistic investors." Reported without comment here; six months later the same expanded margins become the archive's first argued short-side case (July 2026) — "memory is a commodity business. These companies don't have any pricing power."	read ↗
KTOS	Kratos Defense & Security Solutions	QT · SA · STK · FA	Neutral	#5, +187.8% — drones, satellite communications and missile systems for US defence agencies. Three stated causes, only one of them operating: "Defense spending is rising globally… Kratos joined the S&P MidCap 400 Index… The company gained momentum thanks to signing new contracts." Index inclusion listed as a return driver alongside the fundamentals is worth noting in a post about what drove 2025.	read ↗
HOOD	Robinhood Markets	QT · SA · STK · FA	Neutral	#6, +186.8% — and the only name Slegers labels: "Robinhood is a meme stock. But the company also had a great year." The reflexivity is stated openly: "When the stock market rises, brokers like Robinhood attract even more users. More users means more revenue." Revenue sources named as interest on idle cash, Robinhood Gold subscriptions and payment for order flow, plus new prediction markets.	read ↗
RKLB	Rocket Lab Corp	QT · SA · STK · FA	Neutral	#7, +179.5% — end-to-end space infrastructure, not just launch. "It launched more rockets than ever before and successfully placed satellites into orbit," and won "a massive contract of about $816 million to build satellites for the U.S. Space Development Agency." The quality-adjacent argument offered is customer type: government and defence demand "is usually very stable and likely to last for years."	read ↗
NBIS	Nebius Group	QT · SA · STK · FA	Neutral	#8, +174.4% — "Nebius Group quietly spent years building AI-focused data centers. In 2025, the market finally noticed." Triple-digit revenue growth as GPU demand exploded, with the trigger named: "Microsoft signed a multi-year AI infrastructure deal worth over $17 billion. Meta soon followed." Slegers' framing: "It's a classic pick-and-shovel play."	read ↗
UUUU	Energy Fuels Inc.	QT · SA · STK · FA	Neutral	#9, +156.0% — US uranium and rare earths. "Uranium and rare earth materials are becoming increasingly important due to nuclear power and new technologies." The most commodity-exposed name on the list and the clearest instance of the conclusion's warning about "commodity prices, capital cycles… regulatory changes."	read ↗
EOSE	Eos Energy Enterprises	QT · SA · STK · FA	Neutral	#10, +107.2% — zinc-based batteries for long-duration grid storage. Two drivers given: demand from "power grids and data centers", and financing — "the company also raised large amounts of new funding. This allows them to have enough cash to expand production and keep operating smoothly." A capital-raise noted as a positive is the tell that this is a pre-profit business, and the opposite of the low-capital-intensity screen the house framework applies.	read ↗

All ten are Neutral by construction — this is a performance table with business descriptions attached, not a rated list. Three groups account for the whole page: AI infrastructure (NBIS, IREN, MU, and arguably EOSE), defence and space (KTOS, RKLB, ASTS), and single-catalyst risk (OLMA, UUUU, HOOD). Microsoft appears as the counterparty behind both #2 and #8. The paired post three days later, Our Top Picks: 2025 Results, reports the most-picked names rather than the best-performing ones — a much more quality-shaped list — and is the more useful comparison.

2. Talking points

The crowd beat the index, narrowly

"The S&P 500 increased by +16% in 2025… the average stock return of Our Readers equaled +17.3% last year."
Note the measure: the average return of the picks, equally weighted, not a portfolio anyone actually held. The 8 January issue quotes the same year as +17.1% for the index and +19.0% for readers, on the ten most-picked names — two different samples of the same exercise.

The disclaimer, stated twice

Before the list: "these stock picks are the best performing ones. On average, (way) more risk was involved with these companies."
After it: "These are not the type of companies we usually cover at Compounding Quality. Most businesses on this list are cyclical by nature. They are exposed to commodity prices, capital cycles, technological shifts, or regulatory changes."
Worth registering as a product decision: the winners get published because readers want them, and the framework is defended in the same breath.

The AI-contract pattern

Two of the top eight re-rated on one hyperscaler contract each: Nebius on "over $17 billion" from Microsoft (with Meta following), IREN on "about $9.7 billion", also Microsoft.
Slegers notices it in print — "Do you start to see a correlation between AI and the best performers of the year?" — and does not draw a conclusion.
The structural point he does not make: both are single-customer concentration stories dressed as pick-and-shovel plays.

Micron, before the argument against it

Here: "Pricing improved, utilization rose, and Micron's earnings power surprised even optimistic investors."
In July: the same margin expansion is the reason to refuse the stock — margins above the 2018 peak in a business with no pricing power, and Grantham's "if you make obscene profits, you'll get ferocious competition."
The two readings are not contradictory — one is a description of 2025, the other a forecast of the cycle — but the archive is more useful for having both.

What is missing, deliberately

No forward PE, no reverse DCF, no Quality Score, no moat test, no expected return appears anywhere in the issue.
Compare the LeMaitre case nine days later — 15 numbered criteria with published thresholds — to see how far this sits outside the house format.
That absence is the honest signal: a performance list is being published as a performance list.

The index-inclusion driver

Kratos' three reasons include "Kratos joined the S&P MidCap 400 Index" alongside rising defence budgets and new contracts.
Flow-driven re-rating listed beside fundamentals, without distinguishing them, is the kind of thing the July market-structure piece makes an argument about.

Financing counted as good news

Eos Energy: "The company also raised large amounts of new funding. This allows them to have enough cash to expand production and keep operating smoothly."
Under the house's own low-capital-intensity and FCF-conversion tests this is disqualifying, not supportive — which is precisely what the conclusion is admitting.

Summary derived from the archived Compounding Quality post (text in transcript.txt) for personal study. Not investment advice. © Compounding Quality / Pieter Slegers for source material.