IONQ is a high-risk, overvalued lottery ticket not suitable for current purchase at this price, but preferred over RGTI; interest exists only below $34.

Let us know in the chat if you own either of these stocks. We always like to know if we are talking to uh current shareholders from a difficulty level. No position in either. We have We do have shareholders here.

We're going to start with ION Q. Here I am in stock simplifier. We put it into the simplify and we get it going. Okay. This is a $16 billion market cap company. It is categorized as asset heavy.

Stock simplifier says it's only moderately difficult. okay. This is a company that looks like it came public in 2021ish.

It's a threebagger, excuse me, four bagger since coming uh since coming public. And it's a market beater. So looks like a pretty wild pretty wild ride there. What's max? Yeah, it's about up up about 300% in total.

This is a company with a,100 employees founded about 11 years ago.

So the company's profitability. So gross margin is positive. They're making money from selling whatever it is they're selling. Uh operating net free cash flow margins are about as ugly as it gets.

Balance sheet 2.4 billion in cash just 44 million in debt. So strong balance sheet and revenue growth is triple digit. and on a trailing multiple basis about 120 times trailing sales but only four times book value for for whatever it is.

And for some reason, oh, the buyback yield is negative 20%. So, I have a feeling we're going to see some heavy uh dilution there. But let's get into the gist of this business. Ion Q builds quantum computers that use trapped ions as cubits, individually charged atoms held in place by electric fields rather than the fabricated superconducting circuits most large rivals build.

around those machines. It sells quantum networking hardware, including a quantum key distribution line, quantum sensing equipment, and satellite and optical communication terminals.

Uh inq money arrives in three ways. A buyer can purchase a system outright and have it deployed on its own site. Sign direct enterprise or government contracts or rent time on ion's machines through a major cloud marketplace.

Support, maintenance, and application development work follow the systems already installed. And the company is still pre-profit spending far more on research and developing the manufacturing buildout than earns.

And it recently bought brought a uh a semiconductor foundry inhouse.

Who are the customers? The buyers are national governments, defense and national security agencies, national laboratories, and research universities plus a small set of large enterprises.

Institutions that want a machine on their own soil and under their own control carry the hardware line.

Enterprises exploring quantum and drug discovery, material science and financial modeling mostly reach the system through the cloud. And most are still evaluating rather than running production work. So this is in the testing and experiment phase.

What what a buyer weighs in the architecture is ion's traps ion approach competes against the superconducting circuits Google, IBM and Regetti built.

the photonic design, PSI quantum and Xandeu pursue and the trapped ion system under quantanium and alpine quantum technologies also built.

The track ion approach is the key differentiator, thus the name. And then access runs through AWS, Azure, and cloud, the same consoles that carry rival machines.

Very fascinating that they're they already have agreements that run through those things. a very very very very small number. Very small number compared to what a 14 billion dollar market cap or whatever it is, but 54% is quantum computing and hardware.

So this is selling to institutions and then uh consulting platform

now I will say I will say because I know that this is how stock simplifier does it uh based for these cards based on the last fiscal year they are at about 250 in trailing 12 month revenue right now.

Uh right now they're inter US is twothirds of revenue international is 20%. And then Switzerland is 13%. I wonder if that's CERN. How predictable is revenue? More than half of revenue is oneoff system sales to governments and research institutions that buy this kind of equipment once every few years.

One contract by contract. So totally revenue is going to be fluctuating quarter to quarter.

Can it raise prices? Trapped ion systems are genuinely differentiated, but buyers compare architectures across several funded rivals, and no filing shows a price increase absorbed without lost volume.

is it recession proof? So this says no. Quantum computers are big high ticket items purchased by funded by governments. each buyer easy for a buyer to defer and no downturn sits a long time's revenue history.

What's their competitive position? Weak based on their operating margin and return sit far below the comparative group has not apprec

in your opinion how exciting is Ion Q's business I mean it's got revenue that revenue is growing triple digit it's a play on the quantum computing side it has Amazon Google and um Azure that it's selling through and it's doing it in a differentiated way

What phase of the business growth cycle is this company in? There's five phases you can be in. This is an incredibly important thing to know because if you don't know what phase it's in, you don't know what to look at and how to analyze it.

So, this is in phase one. Revenue is growing. It's unprofitable and zero capital is being returned. So, over the last 12 months, they've lost a billion dollars and that's operating profit, not earnings or anything like that.

Are they buying back stock? Nope. And then do they pay a dividend? Nope.

Moat uh moat size. So this is the current size. So sunk on-site hardware and a large patent estate give real protection, but it's a thin moat with no source running at full strength.

Bounded durability rivals run other cubid architectures. So the patent fence fences off nothing that they need and the returns thus far show no edge.

However, the direction here the contracted backlog tripled and the patent pipeline keeps filling up. So the moat is getting wider. The backlog is outlining revenue. Obligations grew 298% versus 2.

So uh the backlog grew slightly faster than revenue and revenue is glowing blazing fast.

Next growth. Analysts expect revenue to grow 123% in the year ahead, roughly 290 million against 130 reported on the consensus of 11 analysts covering the stock.

History supports the pace. revenue has compounded 180% over the last couple of years. So the forward expectation is a slowdown. Um the latest quarter revenue had June quarter was revenue was up 280%.

Yeah. So this company clearly has product market fit

But but look how much it's grown. So 2 million, 11 million, 22 million, 43, 130, now 246. So yes, earnings are growing in the absolute wrong direction, but revenue revenue growth is there.

This is this is a company that's further along than I was assuming it would be.

Is the industry growing? Absolutely. This is a this is a massive industry. Uh, that's important emerging industry for sure. And can new offerings drive growth? Quantum security sensing and space optical terminals are already ship a semiconductor founding just came in house and two billion of cash remains to fund the next one.

The Clavix XK multiplex content security launch a commercial insar capability and a record 84 onorbit oper terminals all landed in the June 2026 quarter.

84 onorbit oper terminals all landed in the June 2026 quarter. uh a working edge. Skywater closed on July 31st, putting a US semiconductor foundry inhouse and Nexus Photonix was brought in bought in the same quarter.

Memorandum of understanding with Anderil and Sania National Labs plus the Tennessee Quantum uh Open Buyers Q did not have so a brand new channel is open.

And is really Andre is a very fast growing company in the I wish Ander was public. If Android was public, I'd be a buyer most likely depending on the price. Um, that'd be a company I would love uh to come public.

AI says this company has extreme growth potential. If you're a phase one company, you better have extreme growth potential. That's uh that's offsetting it. Okay. Management. Heavy dilution.

A deeply negative margin and soft employee reviews outweigh a perfect record against revenue estimates under a chief executive of 18 months.

Stock compensation was 240% of revenue and the diluted share count doubled over the past four years. A brand new management team nicolo deasi took the role in February 2025. only holds 0.5% of the shares with a new finance, legal affairs, and business chief appointed later that year.

What's weird is Glue Mobile is a mobile game developer, and that's where their CEO came from. That's just not something I'm used to seeing. Well, I mean, it's not like where else could you come from that you would have experience running a quantum company?

Untested capital allocation roughly one billion half of the proform of Caspian went to closing Skywater a decision no reported period has graded yet.

Christopher Monroe co-founded Ion Q with he was the chief scientist until recently. Yeah. And he left after eight years. Okay. I I don't know if this is Well, this is going to be ownership of stock.

I'm guessing this guy has a ton of options or stockbased compensation that's going to be vesting. So, this is how much he owns right now. It's like nothing. Um, and he came from Glue Mobile heading the company that took ion Q public.

He's a Cambridge physics degree and under 1% of the shares.

Okay. Do employees like working here? No. Well, Do employees like working here? No. I was surprised there's a thousand of them. That's a lot.

A thin base. Employees don't like it. Do they beat expectations? Yes, they've beat expectations in eight out of eight quarters. Well, as you know, that's how I matters to you. Yeah, that's what matters to me.

Do you exceed expectations? Um, are they shareholder friendly? No. Hard to be shareholder friendly at this stage of the game. And then how strong are operating margins? We know that that's going in the wrong uh wrong direction here from an execution standpoint.

Um, revenue versus estimates. So revenue is way more important at this stage than earnings are.

Yeah, earnings don't matter. They've beat 100% of their last eight quarters on a revenue basis. Only three of eight uh beats on an earnings. And look how look how dramatic the earnings

it's revenue. It's all revenue. It is totally It is totally revenue there. So I'm gonna give it a

I think I think decent to good is fine. Yeah, I'll go good to to me uh I care about revenue execution. That's the thing that I care about at this stage. The other stuff to me is more fluffy.

Um but that's the thing that the market is going to is going to be judged them on.

From a shareholder friendliness perspective, the dilution is obviously high. It's going to be obviously high, but the market is rewarding what they've been doing. Yep. Well, and you you I there's no one that's buying shares that does their homework that's surprised by this.

Nor being deluded. This is why it's really important to know the phase that the company is in so that you can judge them judge them honestly. So stockire says one I'll say four. Okay.

shocking. This is a high-risisk company. Ion Q says it has not produced a scalable quantum computer. Three customers supply over half of revenue and a named rival architecture could make its system obsolete.

The product is unfinished. Ion Q's own filing say has not produced a scalable quantum computer and the business could fail if it cannot overcome the barrier to doing so three customer

that's pretty important yeah I would say so three customers are half of revenue it's a rival architecture could make it obsolete and export controllers plus government budgets setting demand and cash buys time not answers it's got two billion in cash removes financing risk but it does not make the technical problem or the customer concentration any smaller So huge customer concentration risk.

It is both a disrupttor and it is could be disrupted. So you are very much betting that they are correct with their architecture.

How much is outside of their control? Export controls, government budgeting cycles, twothirds of c uh is from one is from one country. And then how healthy are the financials? Well, this says just basically plenty of plenty of cash.

Although that's is that after the the purchase? No. So that that wouldn't include the billion dollar purchase that they just made,

right? Because the quarter ended June 30th and then they made a billion dollar purchase.

Oh. Yeah. Well, we'll check that um in in the financials. Actually, we could do that right now. So, we're on the risk section, but if we go to the financials, then we go to the balance sheet.

So, they have We can go to quarterly, too. Yeah, good idea. Let's go to quarterly. So, as of the most recent quarter, six billion in total assets, but cash was two 2.1. No debt.

Um, all right. So they still have two billion two billion in cash but that is again the transaction happened after the close of the quarter right July. So we were on the risk two weeks ago either way this is very clearly definitely a one it's definitely a one one out of one out of five it's as risky as it gets

valuation. Well Stofl how do you value a company like this? I have no idea. It's very it's ve it's very difficult. There's a couple of ways that you could do it. Um, so the price to sales ratio is going to be your only multiple that works.

Price to gross profit could also also work here. So it looks like the stock got up to 742 times gross profit.

Yeah. But now just 226 times 226 profit and this is compared to its own trading history, right? So that that's a limitation of trailing multiples. you can basically look at it compared to your own um trading history.

Is this a company we should do TAM analysis on? So, we could I've got some rough numbers, but I mean they're they're very very rough. Uh those aren't

Yeah, for those that aren't aware, TAM analysis, you basically look at what could this company be worth if everything goes really well and then you put odds on that happening and then that gets you a rough estimate of what the market cap should be, which adjusts for the odds.

All right. So, so I'm gonna kind of bounce around here. Basecase SAM, this is through Claude. Put it at 20 billion. Okay. And this is for 2035. Okay. So that's 10 years from now.

Yep. Um so then you can choose what you want the bare case and the bullcase to be then. Um I'll go I'll go 100 and yeah that's just is the the this is the how big is the pie that they're going after?

How much revenue opportunity is available? So I'll go 10 20 and 100 by 2035. Okay. Market share base case 20%. Okay. And then you can choose what you want the others to be. And then margin uh base case I would say 17%.

And look this is a business model that's unproven. We have no idea what this their gross margin is 40%. So we do know that right? Yeah. So a company with a 40% gross margin I would say a 10% profit margin is probably

but most of the profits now are onite machines once you start renting it out those have different margins.

Sure. So let's again bull case will be let's go 25% bullcase uh 10% base case 5% bare case. Sure. Future PE ratio 15 30 45. Sure. Um so there you go. So future market caps. So what are the market caps 9 years from now?

well the the important thing to point out is is I see the base case um the base case calls for the market cap in 2036 to be 12 billion. Is that correct? Yep. And today the company is worth 17 billion.

Y So let's just be super clear. If they hit the base case and they have a 20% market share of a 20 billion market, which is what that basically means $4 billion in revenue with a 10% profit margin, you're going to lose a lot of money. A lot a lot of money.

And you're going to wait nine years to do it. Yep. So, the most important cell on here is that one you just clicked on. How much weight do we give the bullcase? That's everything.

It's literally everything. The bull the bull case is this is the 20 bagger. Yep. That's that that's the bull case. So the thing that matters most to your analysis is what are the odds that this company achieves that.

To me this is all about position sizing. Totally. Like I could own this. Would I make it a 5% position? No. Now I we know people who have more than 5% of their portfolio in it.

Part of it's because they invested in a long time ago, but they probably also understand the the technology better than others as well because like Fate was asking, would I consider investing in this industry in the future?

Sure. But I have to put the time in. I've got to put the time in to learn more about this.

Well, Bezos has a great quote about this. He's like, it's it's not it's uh he says if if there's a 1% chance of you getting a thousandx return, right? Or maybe it might even be 10%.

If there's a 10% chance of you getting a thousandx return, you should take that bet every time, right? And because the more times you take the bet, the more likely it is that you're going to hit.

Don't bet the farm on each, right? Position sizing is absolutely absolutely important. So, I'll say uh I'll say 10% chance. 10% chance this company this company works out. If you buy a 10% chance of it working out, a 10 and then a 90% chance of you either of of you getting physically wasting your money wiped out.

This is wiped out 80% chance of you getting wiped out, 10% chance of you treading water, this being dead money. Um but if you think it's there as a 10% chance um then you should be willing to pay the combined average market cap today would be essentially um 46 billion if you if you average all these out now

and I I agree with what invest Yeah. Go ahead. I agree with what investing with confidence said and the ifs are everything. If it can stale scale and if it can achieve superiority, those are two big ifs.

But yeah, if then I would lean heavily towards that right-hand column. If it gets the quantum computer out there, that dramatically lowers the risk profile. And then if it starts selling them, that also dramatically lowers the risk profile.

So no surprise on this company right now, you're playing the news game. The it's what is the news that comes out because that's going to drive absolutely absolutely everything.

So, it's a it's a lottery ticket and and it all comes down to what what are the odds that you think the lottery ticket's going to pay off. If you think it's 10%

10% um then then the returns are going to be stellar. Fantastic. Stellar, totally. Um but from a valuation standpoint, uh given given it just price history at call it 50 bucks a share, I I I'll go fair valued.

I would give it two. That'd be where I would you give it two. Okay. So, it's expensive, but um but but there on the flip side, this is an important point. When you're dealing with companies like this, this is something that David Gardner taught me.

You want them to be overvalued. Oh, yeah. You want them to be expensive. Why? Because they can get money. they because then if their stock is extremely expensive, they can raise capital at very attractive rates, minim minimizing dilution and giving them the capital they need.

If this company was uh let's just say the stock fell 90%. They would have to sell way more of the business to fund their future their future selves. So, David Gardner, this is definitely a David Gardner style business.

He looks for overvalued and that makes the company more attractive, not less.

Yep. more attractive. Counterintuitive, but true. It's so counterintuitive, but if you're going to invest in companies like this, you actually being extremely overvalued is is more of a positive sign than it would be for any other type of business.

So, I I I'll call it expensive. All right. So, overall, this is an exciting business that's in the startup phase. The moat is thin, but it's growing. Uh the growth here is extreme.

The management team I voted as good. The risk here is very high. And depending on your depending on your definition of uh of valuation, you know, it's extremely hard company to to value, but if it hits, wow, could this thing wow could this thing um uh hit.

So I this to me is a classic watchless stock. It's it's not it doesn't appeal to my investing style, but I understand why this company has done so well and so many people are are interested in.

But I'm going to go ahead and set a price alert on this company and let's just call it 34 bucks a share is what is what would probably uh interest me. Are there any while while we're here, are there any financials that you would like to look at at this company?

Um, I would just like to look at the cash outflows, free cash flow, and just see how much do they tend to lose on a on a quarterly basis.

Yeah. So that's not the end of Well, I mean, so if you reduce that two billion to 1 billion based on how that acquisition went, that's that's not a super long runway. You're going to be diluted moving forward most likely.

Totally. You you which is why you want the stock to be overvalued. Their capex is actually very low. Capital expenditure of 10 million. That seems high. Their stock with a new foundry that might change.

You're right. That that will make it much more capital intensive. Um but the free cash flow here, while big negative numbers in a percentage basis, um on an actual dollar basis, yeah, 114 million, let's just call it 150 million a quarter in negative free cash flow, at least historically, compared to two billion or three 2.6 billion in cash.

Tons of runway. So what their cash balance looks like after making that acquisition in June is going to affect their their cash runway.

that I you we said you were going to be diluted with Ion Q and I think you probably will be. I think you'll be even more diluted with regetti. No, me too. No doubt. Why? Uh they actually have some business.

they have a differentiated architecture. They do have rivals. Yep. Uh we we we weren't clear about that. They do have rivals, but not IBM. Both these companies do both but not IBM level rivals whereetti has to compete against IBM with the same architecture and ion could lose to IBM if IBM's architecture wins the day but

they don't have well-healed rivals using the same architecture as Ionq does. I will also say that I dug into the ownership uh records and it does look like their chief technology officer was one of the co-founders of INQ and that person is still on board.

Okay. At at Regetti that yeah no not Regetti at INQ at INQ. Okay. At this stage of the game management and revenue execution to me are the whole ball game. And the hard thing is is that this is both a business execution and a science execution.

Sure. You have to get both parts right. Like they could figure out the science and blow the business.

but for this matchup to me, Ion Q is the very clear one that I would bet on. It's got the better balance sheet. Uh it's further along with the development. Uh the management team is executing better. revenue is growing triple digits.