Riverwater names Veeco its biggest Q2 contributor as memory investment accelerates
The investment manager said stronger orders and results followed expansion in high-bandwidth memory capacity for AI data centres.
Riverwater Partners identified semiconductor equipment maker Veeco Instruments as the largest contributor to its Sustainable Value Strategy in the second quarter of 2026, citing orders and results that exceeded expectations as memory manufacturers expanded capacity for high-bandwidth memory used in AI data centres.
In its Q2 investor letter, Riverwater described Veeco as a supplier of laser annealing and ion beam deposition equipment used in semiconductor manufacturing. The manager said memory makers were racing to add capacity, helping Veeco’s shares more than double over three months.
Riverwater said it repeatedly trimmed the position as its size increased, while retaining Veeco at what it called an “appropriate, defensible” weighting. The stock reportedly closed at US$42.72 on 18 September and was up 46.45 per cent over the preceding year, although it had declined 8.64 per cent over the previous month.
The supplied account said Veeco was held in 38 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the second quarter, compared with 27 in the previous quarter. Those figures and the reported share-price movements were not independently verified.
Riverwater’s broader strategy underperformed its benchmark in the second quarter, largely because it did not hold SanDisk, whose shares rose approximately 720 per cent year to date, according to the investor letter account. Small-cap stocks and the technology sector were described as strong performers in the first half of 2026.
