A digital twin is a visual representation of a real place in real-time. They are being used for industrial facilities, automation, and many other use cases still being developed. Ericcson used Nvidia's ($NVDA) Omniverse to create city-scale models including building materials and vegetation to model the strength of 5G networks. Unity ($U) partnered with Hyundai to create a meta-factory to optimize plant performance. I own both stocks.
There are tons of existing and potential use cases for digital twins and related tech like robotics, vision sensors, etc. What are the best plays, and where are the best places to get in on the ground floor? Here are my picks:
$U (Unity Software, Inc.) – 3D game creation and modelling company. AR, VR, mobile games. Recently acquired Weta and Ziva for sophisticated 3D character simulation. Digital twin potential for industry, architecture, shopping, sports, metaverse. Explosive sales growth. Not yet profitable.
$MTTR (Matterport, Inc.) – Spatial data company focused on digitizing and indexing the built world. Stock down an astonishing -80% in three months. I have never owned the stock, but down here with a market cap under $2B it intrigues. Big miss last earnings call.
$CGNX (Cognex Corporation) – Machine vision products that automate manufacturing and distribution tasks where vision is required. These will be the components that make use of and operate within the digital twin environment. Has earnings. Chart leaves much to be desired.
$FANUY (Fanuc Corporation) – Japanese company providing a wide array of automation products. They developed an open platform for connecting machines from multiple manufacturers (robots, sensors, etc.), IoT, lasers, advanced parcel scanning. Also has earnings. Over 2% dividend. Traded sideways for over a decade.
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