US Manufacturing Revival Fosters Derivatives Plays as High-Tech Outpaces Traditional Industry

US manufacturing is showing a revival after a long period of weak momentum, with survey data indicating stronger activity. The ISM production index has moved from sub-50 contraction territory to levels consistent with firmer growth ahead, while business surveys point to solid order books. Over the next three years, manufacturing volumes are projected to rise by 1.5–2% per year, a pace framed against the sluggish backdrop of the past two decades.

The upturn is expected to be uneven. Advanced, highly automated, high value-added industries linked to the AI and technology cycle are positioned to expand, with pharmaceuticals, tech, transport and aerospace, and electrical and power-related segments cited as areas of strength. By contrast, more traditional, labour-intensive production faces further retrenchment unless it can command a “made in America” price premium, while heavy industry such as steel sits between the two. Relative growth differentials also support the US manufacturing proposition: from 2023 to 2026, the US economy is averaging 2.5% year-on-year volume growth versus 0.9% in Europe.

Strategies for Capitalizing on the Manufacturing Divide

With the US economy outpacing Europe with a 2.5% average growth rate over the last three years, we should position our derivative portfolios to capitalize on a starkly divided manufacturing sector. We recommend buying medium-term call options on advanced manufacturing, aerospace, and semiconductor ETFs like the iShares US Aerospace & Defense ETF (ITA) or the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH). This strategy leverages the massive wave of AI-driven capital expenditure and defense spending that is keeping order books full for high-tech firms.

Conversely, we must hedge this bullishness by purchasing put options on traditional, labor-intensive industrial companies that are suffering from high domestic wages. Sectors like basic textiles or low-value metal fabrication cannot absorb these wage pressures and are poised to contract further. Targeting weak components of the Russell 2000 index with put spreads will protect our portfolios as these low-margin businesses retrench.

Opportunities in Utilities and Volatility Trades

The massive power demands of AI data centers and highly automated factories mean we should also look at utilities and energy derivatives. Historically, US industrial electricity consumption has spiked alongside manufacturing construction spending, which recently hovered around an unprecedented $230 billion annualized rate. We suggest using bull call spreads on the Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLU) to capture this secular power surge.

As we watch the ISM Manufacturing Index fluctuate around the expansion-contraction threshold, we expect heightened volatility in industrial equities over the coming weeks. We should deploy long straddles on broad industrial ETFs like the Industrial Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLI) ahead of upcoming October economic releases. This allows us to profit from the sharp market reactions as the divide between high-tech champions and struggling traditional factories widens.

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Ardena reaps rewards from CDMO specialization plays, US plant buy

As biotechs face increasingly tight development timelines, scale-up headaches, and, more recently, unpredictable policy fluctuations, one way to stand out as a CDMO partner is by picking a specialty and mastering it. 

That was one of Jeremie Trochu’s goals when he joined as Ardena’s CEO in 2024—aiming to steward the CDMO toward a new phase of growth by expanding its international footprint, refining its strengths and ensuring that recent acquisitions entered the fold smoothly. 

In the ensuing years, Ardena has worked to bolster a range of CDMO capabilities without overloading its clients with potential service offerings, Trochu said in a recent virtual interview with Fierce in tandem with DCAT Week 2026. 

“You want to be holistic, but within a particular specialty,” he explained. 

The CDMO’s current business revolves around its advanced oral solid services, from formulation development through to clinical manufacturing and small-scale commercial production, plus its capabilities related to nanomedicines and advanced conjugates, according to Trochu. 

Ardena has integrated those constituent pieces into its overall focus on precision medicine, specifically working with clients on therapies tailored to smaller patient populations, Trochu continued. 

The CEO speculated that more biotechs are likely looking for one-stop-shop CDMOs such as Ardena given the accelerated development and regulatory timelines they’re operating under in places like the U.S. 

When companies developing drugs for rare or undertreated conditions win FDA fast track or orphan drug designations, the pressure increases “to quickly pivot from successful results in phase 2 all the way through to your commercial launch on an accelerated timeframe,” Trochu explained. 

Newer technologies, such as artificial intelligence, also have the potential to increase the pace of development cycles, he added. 

“If you’re not integrated as an operation, and if you’re not specialized in the capabilities you are offering to your client, you are not going to be able to have the agility and the speed necessary and required by your biotech customers,” Trochu said of the resultant expectations placed on CDMOs.

Breaking down some of Ardena’s recent specialization moves, Trochu homed in on nanomedicine, which he noted the CDMO has been engaged with since “before it was cool,” alluding to the lipid nanoparticles that rose to prominence as delivery vehicles for mRNA in COVID-19 vaccines earlier in the decade. 

Over its history, Ardena has worked on more than 100 nanomedicine programs, by Trochu’s tally, and 30 of those are actively in the clinic now, per the CEO. To support its nanomedicine strategy, Ardena established a facility dedicated to the technology in the Netherlands several years back, he added. 

On the other side of the equation, Ardena hasn’t hesitated to downsize in areas where it feels its resources could be better spent.

Case in point: Earlier this year, Ardena agreed to sell a manufacturing facility in Södertälje, Sweden, to local drugmaker Nanologica for nearly $1 million. As Trochu put it, Ardena was “not in a position to truly invest in the next chapter of growth” at the site.

As for the company’s purpose-built Dutch facility, Trochu said Ardena designed the plant to address a “gap” in the market for nanomedicine developers, pointing out that the site has continued to garner strong international interest from clients despite a strained geopolitical environment. 

“When you have a unique set of capabilities and you have a track record along [with] those capabilities, people from the U.S., people from Asia, definitely people from Europe, will find you,” he said. 

Trochu addressed the recent geopolitical turbulence affecting markets and supply chains directly, noting that while there certainly have been pressures on the biopharma industry, “we’ve been pretty immune to those dynamics.” 

Ultimately, biotech clients are still looking for “best-in-class” partners to help solve their problems, and that desire tends to supersede challenges posed by governmental policy shifts, Trochu said. 

Heading West

For much of its history, Belgium’s Ardena has been “primarily an EU-based CDMO,” Trochu said. But the firm in 2024 made inroads into the U.S. with plans to purchase Catalent’s oral solids development and small-scale manufacturing facility in Somerset, New Jersey, which was put up for sale as part of the U.S. CDMO’s acquisition by Novo Holdings. 

Ardena completed the purchase in February of 2025. 

That timing turned out to be serendipitous, Trochu suggested, as a massive industry push to establish or expand U.S. production infrastructure kicked off soon after, largely in response to the threat of U.S. import tariffs under the Trump administration. 

“If you think about the last 15 to 18 months, it’s even more important to be able to supply clients on both sides of the pond,” he explained.

Trochu admitted that the “timing worked out” on the Catalent facility purchase.

“A year later, it would have been maybe a more competitive process to acquire a world-class GMP facility in the U.S., especially in light of a stronger regionalization trend,” he said. 

Ardena has added around 200 employees to its headcount through the purchase of the site, which is currently equipped for clinical and smaller-scale commercial manufacturing of oral drugs. But from the jump, the company’s strategy was to eventually bring its other capabilities online at the U.S. location, Trochu said. 

Some of those expansion efforts are already underway, with the CDMO’s first bioanalytical lab opening in Somerset soon, the CEO added. Meanwhile, Ardena is eyeing portions of the site’s greater GMP space to devote to nanomedicines in the future, he said. 

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