TURNAROUND AFTER YEARS OF STRUGGLE: SOFTBANK, STRATEGIC RESOURCES, AND AIXTRON UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

SoftBank: From Symbol of the Bubble to Japan's Most Valuable Company

Hardly any company symbolizes the excesses of the turn of the millennium quite like SoftBank. In the early 2000s, internet euphoria drove the stock to dizzying valuations before the price plummeted for years following the bursting of the dot-com bubble. A lean period followed, lasting over two decades. The technology investment firm has since redeemed itself. June 3, 2026, could go down as a historic date in Japan's stock market history. On that day, SoftBank surpassed automaker Toyota and has since been the country's most valuable publicly traded company, after its stock jumped more than 14% in a single trading day to a new all-time high. Despite a subsequent correction, its market capitalization currently stands at JPY 34.3 trillion (approximately EUR 184 billion), still above the JPY 28.9 trillion contributed by the automaker—which is itself going through a slump. This time, the trigger for the price surge was not a vague internet promise, but a concrete investment deal: SoftBank holds a 13% stake in ChatGPT developer OpenAI, which is set to go public in the near future.

Not everything about this is risk-free. Although the Tokyo-based group's net profit quadrupled to nearly JPY 5 billion in the fiscal year ended March 31, this monumental jump was almost entirely attributable to unrealized valuation gains from a single AI investment. The book value of all its investments therefore climbed to a record level of around JPY 47.7 billion. Without the write-ups, the bottom line would have shown a loss on the income statement instead of a trillion-yen profit. Nevertheless, analysts and investors have regained confidence in the holding company. The traditional valuation discount relative to intrinsic value has therefore shrunk from around 50% to currently less than 30%. However, much of the stock's upside potential now hinges on OpenAI's planned IPO, which has already been postponed from late 2026 to early 2027. The multi-billion-dollar investment plans for data center infrastructure, such as a major new project in France, are also spread over several years and are economically viable only if the AI boom continues. Nevertheless, the SoftBank case exemplifies how a former symbol of excess can once again become a promising investment—through a new, fundamentally driven megatrend.

Strategic Resources: The End of a Long Downturn Is in Sight

Could SoftBank serve as a blueprint for other stocks poised to soar again after a long slump? One potential candidate for a similar comeback is Strategic Resources, a Canadian commodities company whose share price has fallen from CAD 4 in 2019 to just CAD 0.28 today—a drop of over 90%. There are even legitimate doubts as to whether the 2019 share price was an overvaluation, but the seven-year decline is a reality. Back then, the Montréal-based company, in the midst of that year's brief vanadium price boom, secured several project options in Finland. Starting in 2020, renowned Canadian commodities investor Ross Beaty came on board through his Lumina Group and planned to transform the company into a vehicle for establishing Western vanadium production. The centrepiece was to be the Mustavaara project in northern Finland, a vanadium-iron-titanium deposit operated by Rautaruukki Oy between 1976 and 1985, which at the time accounted for about 10% of global vanadium production.

The decisive structural shift took place in December 2022. As part of a transaction known as a reverse takeover—in which the smaller, already publicly traded company formally acquires a larger one to provide it with access to capital markets—Strategic Resources merged with BlackRock Metals. This added the Canadian BlackRock project in Québec to the portfolio: a mine-ready vanadium-titanium-iron ore deposit with a net present value (NPV) of approximately CAD 1.9 billion after taxes and a planned mine life of 39 years. Phase 1 of the project involves the construction of a pelletizing plant with an annual capacity of 4 million metric tonnes at the deep-water port of Port Saguenay, which will process fine iron ore concentrate into transportable pellets—a highly sought-after product on the global market.

Prominent Advocates and Millions in Government Funding

It is not only industry icon Ross Beaty—founder of Pan American Silver and now chairman of Equinox Gold, another billion-dollar corporation—who is convinced that Strategic Resources has a bright future ahead. The renowned commodity fund Orion Mine Finance and Investissement Québec, the provincial government's investment arm, have also made significant investments. They each hold approximately 41% of the company's shares. What is more, the Québec provincial government is actively involved in the BlackRock project. It is financing a CAD 110 million conveyor belt system at the port, as well as additional supply infrastructure worth CAD 170 million.

Further evidence that the company's Finnish projects were sound investments emerged just a few days ago. On June 29, Strategic Resources announced that its vanadium-rich magnetite concentrate from Mustavaara had been selected for the FutSteel research program led by the University of Oulu. FutSteel is a research project with a budget of EUR 17 million that, in collaboration with the Swedish-Finnish steel group SSAB, is investigating the transition of the Raahe steelworks to a hydrogen-based, low-carbon production chain. CEO Sean Cleary viewed the selection as confirmation that Mustavaara possesses a high-quality concentrate that will become increasingly important for the global supply chain of green steel production. The announcement itself has not yet moved the share price, but it does send a signal: critical raw materials such as vanadium are increasingly coming into focus for industrial end-users—driven by issues such as supply security, electrification, and low-carbon steel production.

Whether this will lead to a revaluation similar to that of SoftBank remains to be seen, of course, but the discrepancy alone between Strategic Resources' market capitalization of CAD 16 million and the estimated value of the BlackRock project at CAD 1.9 billion is certainly noteworthy. And the Finnish operations, Mustavaara, were once estimated to have an after-tax net present value of EUR 190 million and are not even factored into this calculation yet. The underlying megatrend that could trigger a revaluation is becoming increasingly clear. The West needs secure supply chains for critical raw materials to ensure industrial supply. Vanadium, for example, which is indispensable for defence applications and electric mobility, is sourced primarily from China, which accounts for more than 70% of global production, while Russia contributes roughly another 20%.

Aixtron: The Veteran of the New Market on Its Way Back to Its Old Record

An example of a spectacular comeback after years of struggling can be found in Germany. Aixtron, a high-tech machinery manufacturer from Herzogenrath near Aachen that has been well known in stock market circles since the days of the Neuer Markt, reached its previous all-time high of around EUR 88 in August 2000—also a product of the dot-com euphoria, fueled at the time by the hype surrounding light-emitting diode (LED) technology. After the bubble burst, the share price fell over several years to a fraction of its former value. Today, the stock is trading at around EUR 50, still about 45% below its nearly 26-year-old record—though one might say that is not so bad given a 12-month performance of 200%. The driver this time is not LED lighting but rather the AI-driven demand for equipment to manufacture compound semiconductors (substrates composed of multiple chemical elements, such as gallium nitride or silicon carbide), which are needed for data centers, optical data transmission, and laser diodes. Following its first-quarter results, Aixtron has raised its full-year forecast. Management now expects revenue of between EUR 530 million and EUR 590 million, as well as an EBIT margin of 17 to 20%. Whether these targets are realistic, or might even be raised further, could be decided on July 30, when the results for the second quarter are published.

Whether and when Aixtron will break its previous record remains to be seen. The price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio in the high double digits reflects significant premature optimism, and revenue expected for 2026 remains below levels seen during the boom years of 2023–2024. In light of this, the market capitalization of around EUR 6.4 billion, more than ten times annual revenue, is no small feat. Some analysts now consider the valuation ambitious. Nevertheless, the company, listed on the German small-cap indices MDAX and TecDAX, demonstrates that a new, broadly supported trend (in this case: AI infrastructure instead of LED lighting) can be enough to heal a two-decade-old valuation scar—albeit not yet completely in this instance. Aixtron thus strikes a balance between record-chasing SoftBank and breakout candidate Strategic Resources.

Real-world megatrends that can no longer be stopped

Three companies, three special situations—and a common mechanism: SoftBank and Aixtron demonstrate that even stocks that were grossly overvalued during an earlier speculative phase can reclaim their old share price highs—or at least get significantly closer to them again—as soon as a fundamentally driven trend creates new realities. The comparison with Strategic Resources is intentionally broad. It is not meant to suggest an identical share price trajectory, but rather to illustrate a familiar pattern: a prolonged period of stagnation followed by the emergence of credible new growth drivers can lead to a market re-rating. The Canadian small-cap stock is at a much earlier stage of this potential pattern than the two AI beneficiaries. Regulatory approval processes and negotiations with banks to finance construction costs are still ongoing. However, as soon as these are finalized, the stock is likely to follow the pattern set by SoftBank and Aixtron. The megatrends of defence, electrification, and supply chain security for critical raw materials, combined with political tailwinds, are very real. There is no turning back now.