I just went all in on CRSR after 5 years of pain

TLDR: I 8x’d my CRSR position. Memory supply is tight, Crucial is exiting leaving a window of opportunity in the consumer memory segment, insiders are finally buying, stock buybacks have started, and in 15 years in this industry I have never seen a cycle like this. Either this is a structural bottom, or I just crowned myself the ultimate CRSR bagholder.

I've gone back and forth on posting this for the last month because if I am wrong, this will be a very public and very expensive lesson. There has been very little talk about this stock anymore even after the recent earnings report, which tells me sentiment is crushed, but I have been dying to know whether I am missing something or seeing something others are not.

So I bought 63k worth of CRSR in 2021 and it has been a painful and very consistent memory ever since. I know many here have encountered the same grind, but I assume not many would have leaned in as hard as I did. Apparently five years of losses was not enough for me, so over the last month, I convinced myself to buy another 500k worth which represents almost everything I have that is tangible. Until earnings lined up with what I suspected, I was straight up unwell for weeks. The day after I bought a sizeable amount, it ticked up about fifteen cents and I briefly thought I was a genius. Fifteen minutes later it rolled over and I was back to watching the same five year bloodbath. I even cut coffee for a few days thinking maybe the anxiety was self inflicted. It was not the caffeine.

For context, I am the CEO of Eluktronics. We build enthusiast grade gaming laptops. We are not direct competitors with Corsair in most categories, but we have shared some suppliers, live through the same component cycles, and cater to the same performance focused market. I handle allocation, build of materials pricing, and supplier negotiations daily and have for fifteen years. I have lived through multiple memory cycles and this one is not normal.

The reason I made what is easily the scariest purchase of my life started with a missed opportunity in Micron. I did not buy before earnings, despite aggressively securing their product for our own business the last few months while watching the prices rise, and that mistake forced me to step back and reassess what is happening in memory and storage.

As many know, the PC industry ran into a perfect storm. OpenAI locked up major DRAM supply for 2026 with SK Hynix and Samsung, Micron exited the consumer segment, and panic followed for OEMs, system integrators, distributors, retail and businesses. Before the AI surge, we could buy 32GB SODIMMs as low as $75 each. Now we're lucky to find quality memory for less than $315 each. High-end 2TB SSDs we were sourcing for ~$120 are now several multiples of that. I still cannot reconcile how quickly those numbers escalated and they are not stabilizing.

What caught my attention even more than pricing was supply behavior. In fifteen years I have never seen module assemblers go nearly bone dry. I can almost always get a quote even if it is painful. This time I had most vendors tell me they literally had nothing to sell and one sales rep admitted he was probably going to lose his job. Retail has always lagged disti pricing because inventory and deals are often planned months in advance. In many instances, especially this time around, I was buying components for significantly less than we could even buy from direct vendors or distributors so I started buying as much as I could from retail that made sense.

After seeing Micron and Sandisk earnings, it became obvious that whoever still had supply in this environment was benefiting. That is what led me to dig deeper again into Corsair. They were one of the only module vendors that still had product available across Amazon, Best Buy, Micro Center, B&H, Newegg & distribution. Meanwhile Team Group, Silicon Power, Adata, Mushkin and others were selling out and some have yet to restock. I initially assumed that as a global supplier Corsair might be diverting inventory into the U.S. to maintain presence here. That turned out not to be the case. I also monitored Amazon's transparent sales indicators like the “500+ bought in the last month” tags. Most of their product was not sitting idle. It was still moving while prices were climbing mountains.

Crucial is stepping out of this segment as Micron pulls back from the consumer side. We will see this play out more in Q2 since they announced February as their planned end, but I have already seen multiple SKU discontinued notices on retail sites like B&H. That removes the most meaningful branded competitor from the retail channel, since Samsung and SK Hynix do not sell memory to retail. With supply for consumers about to get even worse and one of the most recognized names leaving, someone else is going to win out.

On a prior CRSR earnings call, management mentioned they had secured DRAM ahead of the spike. At the time, I wondered just how much that meant. Seeing them consistently in stock while others were running dry suggests that comment and judgement call on their end was monumental.

All of this leads to my core thesis. This memory cycle looks structurally different than anything I have seen in fifteen years, Corsair appears to have secured supply ahead of competitors and may have stronger supplier relationships. On the most recent earnings call they even reiterated they have invested in additional DRAM supply.

Insider buying also caught my attention. Since the IPO, meaningful insider buying has been non-existent unless I'm missing something in the SEC EDGAR. That changed for the first time with Thi La buying 50k shares at $6.10 and long term board member (Sam S.) bought 100k shares at $6.59. I've seen comments saying those amounts are small relative to their compensation, but who would finally put their own money into something they believe is headed off a cliff?

I have read the bear cases and many of them are valid. Post pandemic normalization is real and demand was clearly pulled forward. Customer service issues were not imaginary and Steve’s video deserved some popcorn to enjoy the show. Where I disagree is with the idea that RAM is just RAM and that memory is purely a commodity where anyone simply slaps their name on the product.

That is simply not true. There are different grades of memory, real binning complexity, frequency ceilings, latency tolerances, and validation differences. Yes, the fabs manufacture the wafers, but consistently pushing higher frequency, tighter timing modules at scale is not trivial. From our own binning experience, SK Hynix tends to offer the strongest overclocking headroom, Samsung typically follows, and Micron generally trails when pushed beyond stated specifications.

Based on that, I believe Corsair relies more heavily on SK Hynix for its higher performance kits. If Micron continues exiting the consumer segment, the impact on Corsair may be limited compared to many module suppliers that depend more heavily on Micron’s lower grade SpecTek chips, which are generally wafers that do not qualify for Micron branding.

Yes, the chart has been terrible for quite some time. Sentiment is weak, and I have already been wrong for years holding this. Truthfully, my first purchase was a spur of the moment driven decision, hoping to catch a ride. This time was different. It came after a significant amount of research and a deeper look at the fundamentals that led me to lean in again. After the earnings report, I had a clear opportunity to finally turn a five year loss into a profit on this ticker, and I did not sell. I held, and I plan to continue holding, because I see much more upside here than I believe the market is recognizing.

There is also the tariff situation. They absorbed about 12 million dollars. The IEEPA tariffs were ruled on Friday to be illegal by the Supreme Court, though whether refunds materialize remains uncertain. If it does result in a refund, that would be a giant offset to debt that's not being considered.

The final piece of my thinking was demand behavior. When a 2TB SSD is priced at $700+, most consumers cannot and should not justify that purchase like a business would. Discretionary spending does not disappear, it reallocates. If core components feel irrationally expensive, gamers will pivot toward other upgrades instead, whether that is a new case, keyboard, headset, mouse, or other peripherals. No, peripherals would not replace memory revenue dollar for dollar, but if elevated component pricing persists, revenue mix can shift in meaningful ways. Corsair has reported margins near 40% on those categories.

I am not presenting this as a clean turnaround story. The setup has been messy and skepticism exists for a reason. I could absolutely be wrong again. But sitting inside the same component ecosystem, this memory environment feels distorted in a way I have not experienced before, and Corsair appears to have positioned itself better than most other competitors. In my opinion, their brand value is underestimated and the current price does not reflect that. They finally have enough optimism in their own company to buy stock back, and are actually heading toward profitability.

That is why I added and held instead of taking the escape hatch when it finally appeared. Curious to hear what I am missing, or whether this becomes the very public and very expensive lesson I debated posting all along.