Peter Oppenheimer, Goldman Sachs’ Chief Global Equity Strategist, went on Bloomberg on July 1, 2026 and pointed at a statistic most US-focused investors have missed: European equities have kept pace with the S&P 500 through the first half of the year, despite carrying a fraction of the tech weight.
The tortoise is running even with the hare, though it is still a little behind.
The hyperscaler capex is leaking across the Atlantic
Oppenheimer’s core argument is that AI infrastructure spending does not stay bottled up inside five US megacaps. “This massive ramp up in spending that the hyperscalers have been doing has been, and I think will continue to trickle out into some better earnings growth into other sectors,” he said. The largest beneficiary sits in the Netherlands.
ASML (NASDAQ:ASML | ASML Price Prediction) is the sole supplier of EUV lithography, the machinery that etches the transistors AI accelerators need. The stock trades near $1,839 after a 71.98% year-to-date run. CEO Christophe Fouquet told investors in April that “demand for chips is outpacing supply” and raised full-year guidance to €36 to €40 billion. Backlog exited 2025 at $45.06 billion. The 2030 revenue opportunity sits at €44 to €60 billion, disclosed in the company’s most recent SEC filing.
STMicroelectronics (NYSE:STM) is the other AI spillover surprise, up 189.88% year to date. CEO Jean-Marc Chery guided datacenter revenue “nicely above $500 million for 2026 and well above $1 billion for 2027,” tied to a multi-year commercial engagement with AWS that includes warrants on up to 24.8 million shares. Infineon Technologies, the German power-chip maker whose silicon carbide converters sit inside every AI rack’s power shelf, is up 115.26%.
The valuation gap is doing work
Oppenheimer’s second argument is arithmetic. Even after adjusting for Europe’s lighter software exposure and fewer megacap platforms, comparable European companies trade at a discount to US peers. ASML carries a trailing PE of 61 and a forward PE of 50, a discount to what US investors pay for AI infrastructure exposure with a fraction of the monopoly.
SAP (NYSE:SAP) shows the discount at work. The stock is down 35.48% year to date after a Q1 earnings EPS of $1.72 missed the $1.92 estimate. But cloud revenue still grew 27% at constant currencies, and CEO Christian Klein noted SAP Business AI “was included in two thirds of our Q4 cloud order entry.”
The stock now trades at a forward PE of 19x with analyst targets averaging $254.
Profit growth is the new rate cut
With ECB and Fed easing pushed further out, Oppenheimer argues the marginal buyer needs earnings, not liquidity. “The main driver of equity markets is going to be profit growth through the remainder of the cycle. I think Europe stacks up reasonably well,” he said. He also flagged the shock statistic: “Europe holding up as well, despite all of our focus on AI, much lower exposure to technology. It’s quite an amazing statistic, isn’t it?”
Part of that is value ballast. Eni (NYSE:E), the Italian integrated energy major, is up 26.37% year to date. CEO Claudio Descalzi raised FY26 cash flow guidance to €13.8 billion and expanded the buyback program to €2.8 billion. Europe generates cash from sectors the US market has largely written off, and it pays it back.
What it means for a US-heavy portfolio
Oppenheimer expects Europe to deliver “more moderate index gains” than the US. The pitch is diversification with the AI thesis intact. If your view is that hyperscaler capex keeps climbing, the picks-and-shovels story does not end at the New Jersey border.
The Dutch lithographer, the German power-chip maker, and the Franco-Italian sensor company deliver that diversification without abandoning the AI thesis.
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