We recently compiled a list of the 10 Worst Augmented Reality (AR) Stocks According to Short Sellers. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI) stands against the other AR reality stocks that short sellers do not recommend.

Augmented Reality (AR) has been an exciting development within the broader tech sector. AR offers a partly immersive experience to users through which they can interact directly with a 3D overlay onto the external reality in real-time. There are several interesting examples of AR usage in today’s tech sector, such as AR projections from phone devices, AR windshields on cars, and, perhaps most commonly, AR glasses. Suffice it to say this is a growing area within tech with immense potential, and there’s a lot of excitement surrounding AR players in the market today.

In our previous articles on AR stocks, we’ve covered some of the key players in this space, including notable tech titans. However, if you’ve kept up with developments in the AR space, you’d know that many investors are still considering this area to be a risky investment overall and are not convinced that the billions of dollars that are going into developing AR tech are justified. Because of this type of sentiment in the market, one of the major businesses in AR/VR today, Reality Labs, is undergoing loss upon loss and is unable to really make it back.

Investors Are Worried About the Future of AR Companies

On April 25, Rob Sanderson, managing director at Loop Capital, joined CNBC’s “The Exchange” to discuss Mark Zuckerberg’s increased spending in AR/VR. He noted that the company had been spending about a quarter’s worth of earnings on Reality Labs to build up the vision of the Metaverse, but there’s not a great return on investment for this spending, and nor are there any ways to justify it. Another interesting factor here is that despite the immense spending on Reality Labs and presumably the Meta Quest 2 headset, most tech experts who have gotten the chance to try out this headset believe that it loses out in competition with another, pricier headset – the Vision Pro. According to Joanna Stern, Wall Street Journal’s senior personal technology columnist, the Vision Pro is just not comparable with the Quest 2. The Vision Pro is winning in this race because it’s lighter, offers more seamless operability, and is just more user-friendly in terms of its features – all this despite the hefty price tag.

With the way things are, it’s unsurprising that investors are beginning to lose faith in Reality Labs and really can’t wrap their heads around the immense spending being done there. This type of concern is actually rampant across the board for many AR stocks in the market today, with several of these companies having the same issue of increased spending, which tends to throw investors in a panic because many of the companies operating in the AR space right now are actually quite small, and still have to prove their worth in the market. Considering this widespread concern, we’ve compiled a list of some of the worst AR stocks according to short sellers, so investors looking to buy into this space know where to put their money and which companies to absolutely avoid, at least for the time being.

Our Methodology

We first compiled a list of 20 AR stocks by sifting through ETFs and online rankings. We then selected the 10 stocks with the highest short interest and ranked them in ascending order of this metric. We have also mentioned the number of hedge funds holding stakes in each stock, as per Insider Monkey’s hedge fund data for the second quarter.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points. (see more details here).

Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 47

Short Interest: 13.1%

Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI) is another information technology company on our list and is based in San Jose, California. The company’s product offerings include edge-to-cloud technologies for AR, computer vision, multi-access edge computing, and more. It is also working with Taqtile to provide an interactive demonstration of AR for robotics and on-site training.

One of the major reasons why investors should avoid this stock is that its capital expenditures have been on the rise since the end of 2023, while its gross profit margin has been plateauing. For instance, in 2024, Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI) hit the $92 million mark on its quarterly capital expenditures, while its gross profit margin actually fell from over 18% in 2023 to about 15.5% in 2024.

Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI) is also considered overvalued relative to its competitors. The stock has a P/E ratio of 27.3, while competitors Dell and HP, which are arguably more diversified, have P/E ratios of 22.8 and 12.02, respectively. Because of this, investors looking to buy into businesses similar to Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI) prefer the cheaper options that are also better poised to continue on a growth trajectory in the near future.

There were 47 hedge funds long Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI) in the second quarter, with a total stake value of $1.5 billion. Citadel Investment Group was the most prominent shareholder, holding 17,515,000 shares.

Artisan Partners said the following about Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI) in its second-quarter 2024 investor letter:

“Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI) manufactures server racks for central processing units and GPUs that have experienced an artificial intelligence-driven uptick in demand from its cloud and enterprise customers. This company has been on our radar for years, and we met with them in our Milwaukee offices in early 2023. However, we don’t consider the stock investable given corporate governance issues.”

Overall SMCI ranks 6th on our list of the AR reality stocks that short sellers do not recommend. While we acknowledge the potential of SMCI as an investment, we believe that AI stocks hold great promise for delivering high returns and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than SMCI but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.