216. Dancing While the Music Plays: Clean Energy Equities Market - Feb26

Clean Energy equities have comfortably outperformed the major indices in 2025.

Laurent and Gerard are joined by friend of the show Shanu Mathew, an equity portfolio manager everyone in the sector knows to unpack what’s really driving this performance.

We begin by putting recent returns into a longer-term context — and by flagging an important caveat: some of the strongest results are coming from highly concentrated portfolios.

Shanu makes a critical distinction that often gets blurred in market commentary: equipment providers versus sellers of electrons. On one side sit companies like GE Vernova, Siemens Energy, Schneider Electric, Caterpillar — and the surprise guest, Bloom Energy. On the other are utilities and IPPs. The divergence is striking. Equipment manufacturers have gone ballistic; utilities have performed, but at a far more pedestrian pace.

The difference, unsurprisingly, is pricing power. Equipment suppliers — particularly those insulated from Chinese competition — have been able to push through aggressive price increases, turbocharged by surging demand from Hyperscalers. Utilities, by contrast, remain constrained by regulation, public scrutiny, and political pressure.

The result? Hyperscalers are increasingly looking to self-generation: reciprocating engines, fuel cells, and a growing enthusiasm for frontier technologies such as Enhanced Geothermal and Small Modular Reactors.

We walk through these alternatives, examine how public markets are valuing them today, and end where every cycle eventually leads us: Are we in a bubble?
Or, as Chuck Prince, then CEO of Citigroup, famously put it on the eve of the 2008 financial crisis:
“As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.”