4 Robotics Stocks to Buy NOW

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While everyone's glued to the same AI chatbots and software names, the real money is quietly shifting into robotics, AI stepping off the screen and into the physical world. Most investors will chase the flashy little robotics company hoping it's the next big thing. Most of those burn through cash and disappear.

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The smarter play is owning the picks and shovels, the businesses that get paid no matter which robot wins. Here are 4 of them. A couple are firing on every cylinder, and a couple still look surprisingly cheap.

1. Zebra Technologies (ZBRA)

We will start with Zebra Technologies (ZBRA).

A robot in a warehouse is blind without a nervous system telling it what's around it and where things are going. That's Zebra. They make the barcode scanners, machine vision systems, mobile computers, and tracking tech that let automated warehouses function, and they've been pushing hard into industrial machine vision and fixed scanning, the exact tools automated factories use to track and inspect goods. As robots multiply, Zebra sells more of the sensing layer that makes them useful.

Business is heating up too. Zebra just sailed past earnings expectations, and has now beaten or met estimates for 15 consecutive quarters. Earnings are forecast to grow more than 27% a year going forward, faster than the rest of its industry.

On the analyst side: 3 Strong Buy, 3 Buy, and 3 Hold recommendations, with the most bullish voices among the top rated analysts tracked, and price targets suggesting the stock could see roughly 30% upside in the coming year.

Zebra earns an overall Zen Rating of B, a Buy recommendation, in the top 7% of the more than 4,600 stocks tracked. Growth comes in at the top 20%, Financials at the top 18%, and the standout is Sentiment at the top 9%, meaning the smart money is quietly moving in. Value and the AI grade sit a notch above the pack, with the rest landing around average.

The thing to watch is the spending cycle. A good chunk of Zebra's business depends on retailers and warehouses investing in new hardware, which can slow when the economy gets shaky. But the company has been leaning into steadier areas like healthcare to smooth that out, and demand looks to be turning back up.

Zebra gives robots their eyes. But those robots have to be built somewhere, in factories that are themselves being automated, which leads straight to the next one.

2. Park-Ohio Holdings (PKOH)

Next up is Park-Ohio Holdings (PKOH), and this is about as pure a picks and shovels play as it gets.

Park-Ohio is an industrial company with roots stretching back over a century, and it supplies the guts of modern manufacturing, the supply chain systems, the engineered equipment, and the automated production hardware that factories run on. Management is pointing straight at the growth markets everyone's excited about right now, data centers, industrial electrification, aerospace and defense. When a company decides to automate a factory floor, Park-Ohio is one of the outfits that makes it happen.

The market has started to figure that out. Shares are up more than 130% over the past year. Now, before you think it's already been missed, here's why the move may not be over.

Park-Ohio's earnings are forecast to grow nearly 26% a year, ahead of its industry. And it's still cheap on the growth. Its PEG ratio sits at 0.91. PEG is the price to earnings ratio adjusted for how fast earnings are growing, and for the average stock, that ratio sits at around 1.5. Anything under 1 is considered a bargain for the growth you're getting. A stock up triple digits that's still under 1 on PEG is a rare combination.

Now here's the interesting part. Even with that monster rally and striking valuation relative to growth, Wall Street coverage is thin. Just 1 analyst, with a Strong Buy rating, and a price target that implies an upside of more than 30% from where the stock is at right now. And that analyst ranks in the top 3% on Wall Street in terms of actual stock picking performance.

Now to the data, and this is where Park-Ohio really shines. Park-Ohio earns an overall Zen Rating of A, a Strong Buy recommendation, landing it in the top 1% of every stock the system tracks. That is about as high as this rating goes.

The component grades back that up in a way you rarely see. Look at the cluster of strength here. Growth, the top 4%. Sentiment, also the top 4%. Safety, also the top 4%. And the standout, Momentum, all the way up in the top 2%.

The only softer grade is Financials, which lands around the middle of the pack. And that middle of the pack Financials grade points to the one thing to watch, this is a lower margin, capital heavy industrial business that carries a fair amount of debt, so it's more sensitive to the economic cycle than an asset light software name. That's the honest tradeoff.

But a company sitting in the top 1% of everything tracked, growing earnings faster than its peers, still cheap on PEG, with a top tier analyst pounding the table, strong on Growth, Sentiment, Safety, and Momentum, that paints a picture of a company where the fundamentals are firing and the market is actively waking up to it at the same time. Definitely a picks and shovels story worth paying attention to.

3. Sanmina (SANM)

That brings us to Sanmina (SANM).

Sanmina is what's called a contract manufacturer. When another company designs a complex piece of electronics, a rack of AI servers, a piece of medical robotics, a defense system, Sanmina is the one that actually builds it at scale. They don't need to invent the winning robot. They get paid to manufacture everybody's hardware.

Last year the company bought ZT Systems' data center manufacturing business from chip giant AMD. That unit builds the rack scale infrastructure that powers AI data centers. This was not a bolt on. Management expects it to roughly double the company's revenue over the next few years. In one move, Sanmina went from a quiet, steady manufacturer to a direct builder of the physical backbone of the AI boom.

And it shows in the numbers. Sanmina has beaten Wall Street's earnings estimates for 8 quarters in a row. And here's the part worth noting, those beats have gotten dramatically bigger lately. The early ones squeaked past by a few percent. The last few blew past estimates.

That's a company that keeps coming in ahead, over and over. And looking forward, its earnings are forecast to grow nearly 52% a year, blowing past its industry's average of 29%.

To be upfront, this stock has been on a ride. It's up more than 60% over the past year, but it's also pulled back close to 30% from its highs this summer. So this is not a name sitting at an all time high that's being chased. If anything, this is a fast growing business that's caught its breath.

And it's still cheap on the growth, with a PEG ratio of just 0.7. The Zen Ratings update daily, so a free rating on Sanmina or any other stock is just a ticker search away at WallStreetZen.com.

The system likes what it sees. Sanmina earns an overall Zen Rating of A, a Strong Buy recommendation, in the top 3% of every stock tracked. Value comes in at the top 18%. Sentiment, stronger, at the top 9%. And the standout, Growth, up in the top 5%.

The one real soft spot is Safety, which grades below average. Safety measures how steady and predictable a company's earnings and stock price are, and with a stock that's swung this much, that's fair. It can be a bumpy ride. But a business physically building the AI backbone, 8 straight earnings beats, and a bargain PEG, that's a lot to like on a name that just went on sale. Growing fast, with the smart money moving in, and still not overpaying.

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4. Seagate Technology (STX)

Here's something you don't often see, a company most people wrote off years ago, steadily turning into one of the biggest winners of the entire AI buildout. This is Seagate Technology (STX).

Most people know Seagate as the hard drive company. And that's exactly why most people are underestimating what's happening here. Every robot, every AI model, every automated system generates a staggering amount of data, and all of that data has to live somewhere. Seagate makes the high capacity storage that AI data centers are buying as fast as it can be made. Physical AI doesn't just need brains and robot makers. It needs memory. That's Seagate.

The turnaround here is remarkable. A couple of years ago Seagate was actually losing money. Today it's not just profitable, it's posting some of the biggest earnings in the company's history, and it has topped Wall Street's estimates for 13 quarters in a row. That's a business that has completely turned a corner.

And this isn't slowing down. Seagate's earnings are forecast to grow more than 63% a year, and here's what makes that special. That's twice as fast as both its industry and the broader market. Its revenue is also forecast to grow faster than both its peers and the market. It's rare to find a company beating on both counts at once.

The market has absolutely noticed this one. The stock has been a rocket. But the PEG sits below 0.9x, so once again, it's far from overpaying for growth. And the analysts think there's a lot more room to run.

17 Wall Street analysts cover Seagate, and they land on a consensus Strong Buy recommendation, with 11 of them at Strong Buy. And these are heavy hitters. The Street high price target implies an upside of more than 75%, and it comes from an analyst who ranks in the top 1%. A whole cluster of analysts covering the stock rank in the very top, and they're all beating the same bullish drum. That's a big statement on a stock that's already climbed this much.

And the data agrees emphatically. Seagate earns an overall Zen Rating of A, a Strong Buy recommendation, in the top 5% of every stock tracked. The strength cluster here is beautiful. Growth, the top 7%. Momentum, the top 5%. And the standout, Financials, all the way up in the top 3%.

The honest knock is the same one that applies to any stock that's run this hard, Value grades in the middle of the pack, because the price has moved a long way. It is not the bargain it was a year ago. But a fortress balance sheet, double digit beating growth on both the top and bottom line, a wall of top analysts pounding the table, and a top 5% rating at a PEG under 1, that's the picture of a company firing on every cylinder, right at the center of where all this AI data is headed.

Conclusion

So there you have it, 4 ways to own the robotics and AI boom from the ground up. Zebra giving the robots their eyes. Park-Ohio building the automated factory. Sanmina assembling the hardware. And Seagate storing everything it all creates. Picks and shovels, every one of them, the businesses that get paid no matter which robot maker ends up winning.

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