11 October 2026
Portfolio Manager Daniel Martin believes the market dodged a bullet when Firmus Technologies withdrew its ASX listing in October. Speaking with The Australian, Daniel said the float, which would have valued the data centre operator at up to $44 billion, risked following the path of SpaceX. That stock surged on its June debut and gave back much of the rally within weeks.
What concerned him most was how heavily the deal relied on retail investors. A book with genuine institutional demand shouldn’t need to reach that far.
“If you’re going down to that level of retail investor participation in an IPO, you probably don’t have your book build oversubscribed like you claim,” he said. He also credited the big super funds for staying out.
The business model is the bigger issue. Firmus builds and runs data centres, but the chips sit with Nvidia and the large language models belong to others. Daniel sees that as a difficult position to earn a return from.
With so much capital packed into the AI trade, we’re spending more of our time outside the obvious winners. Daniel still likes Woodside Energy, given the energy data centres will need whether or not every project goes ahead. He also likes News Corp, REA Group’s major shareholder, for its REA exposure and the growing value of trusted information.
“Quality of data is becoming such a focus for everyone now,” he said.