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Fiserv Inc. plunged by the most ever after the fintech slashed its outlook for full-year earnings and announced a broad overhaul of its board and top leadership committee. The company, one of the largest providers of technology to banks, cut its estimate for this year’s adjusted earnings per share to $8.50 to $8.60 from the […]
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PayPal is investing in agentic commerce, expecting it to be the company’s next growth engine in an AI-driven market. The company today announced a deal with OpenAI making PayPal the first payments wallet inside ChatGPT. The San Jose, Calif.-based company is “building for a future where consumers can pay through AI agents powered by Google, […]
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Vaidik Trivedi
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China’s industrial profits rose sharply in September, extending momentum from a stronger-than-expected increase in August.
Industrial profits rose 21.6% from a year earlier in September, following a 20.4% rise in August that ended a three-month run of declines, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Monday.
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Dow Jones futures will open Sunday evening, along with S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures after the stock market rally hit record highs Friday. Now get ready for a huge week of earnings, another Fed rate cut and a Trump-Xi meeting A “comprehensive” U.S.-China trade deal is close after weekend talks, setting the stage for President Donald Trump and Chinese President…
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Mattel, Hasbro Could Win As Toy Retailers Scramble to Stock Up for Holiday
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Intel’s third-quarter earnings beat Wall Street expectations Thursday, results buoyed by a bump in revenue combined with larger cuts, and multiple, sizable investments over the last two months as CEO Lip-Bu Tan looks to turn around the struggling semiconductor giant.
Intel’s revenue results and its $4.1 billion in net income provides a far rosier view than its string of quarterly losses. But the company’s recovery story deserves several chapters dedicated to cost cutting via layoffs and other reductions as well as a series of high-profile investments from Softbank, Nvidia, and the U.S. government.
Intel added $20 billion to its balance sheet during the third quarter, the company announced on its third-quarter earnings presentation on Thursday, sending its stock soaring. This growth was largely due to three sizable investments in the company over the last three months.
In August, SoftBank invested $2 billion. A few days later, the U.S. Government took an unprecedented 10% equity stake in Intel. The company has received $5.7 billion of the planned $8.9 billion from the U.S. Government thus far. Nvidia also bought a $5 billion stake in Intel in September as part of a broader deal to develop chips together over time.
“The actions we took to strengthen the balance sheet give us greater operational flexibility and position us well to continue to execute our strategy with confidence,” Tan said on the company’s earnings call. “In particular, I’m honored by the trust and confidence President Trump and Secretary [Howard] Lutnick have placed in me. Their support highlights Intel’s strategic role as the only U.S.-based semiconductor company with leading edge logic, [research and development] and manufacturing.”
The company also received $5.2 billion from closing the sale of its ownership stake of Altera, a hardware company it had owned since 2015, on September 12. It also sold its stake in Mobileye, an autonomous driving tech company.
Intel grew its quarterly revenue by $800 million in the third quarter to $13.7 billion, compared to $12.9 billion. Intel had net income of $4.1 billion in the third quarter, a steep reversal from the $16.6 billion loss it reported in the same year-ago period.
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Despite the strong quarter, there weren’t many details on what will happen next with Intel’s foundry business, which makes custom chips for customers. The business has floundered from the start and has been a focus of Tan, who initiated significant layoffs in its foundry business this summer.
The business appears to be a priority of the Trump administration; a key condition of the government’s investment in Intel includes language that it will penalize Intel if it divested from its foundry business over the next five years.
Wall Street is keeping a close eye on foundry for signs of the company’s long-term growth. Intel analysts told TechCrunch in August that the company did not need cash to turn itself around but rather a strategy to get its foundry business on track.
Tan said that Intel thinks its foundry business is “uniquely positioned” to capitalize on the swelling demand for chips but was light on the details — beyond saying that the company is actively engaging with potential foundry customers — and added that the growth of the foundry business would remain disciplined.
“Building a world-class foundry is a long-term effort founded on trust,” Tan said. “As a foundry, we need to ensure that our process can be easily used by a variety of customers, each with their unique way of building their own products. We must learn to delight our customers as they count on us to build wafers, to meet all their needs for powerful performance, yield, cost, and schedule.”
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Rebecca Szkutak
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The Trump administration’s investment in Intel appears to be paying off, but the once-mighty chipmaker has a long way to climb back to industry dominance.
In August, the US government announced it was converting about $9 billion in federal grants that Intel had been issued during the Biden administration into a roughly 10 percent equity stake in the company. During its third-quarter earnings on Thursday—its first financial update since President Trump’s surprise investment—Intel reported that it earned $13.7 billion in revenue over the past three months, a 3 percent increase year-over-year. It’s the fourth consecutive quarter that Intel has beat revenue guidance.
Intel’s stock price is up more than 90 percent since it made the deal with Trump over the summer. Back then, the company’s shares were trading around $20. On the heels of its earnings report today, its stock price had risen to $38.16.
The White House announced it was investing in Intel weeks after Trump publicly called for CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign over his alleged problematic ties to China. The president changed his stance only days later, however, after having what he described as a positive meeting with Tan.
On the earnings call, Tan said he was “honored by the trust and confidence” that Tump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had placed in him. He added that Intel was “fully committed to the Trump administration’s vision and proudly welcomes the US as an essential partner in our efforts.”
Intel’s stronger-than-expected revenue suggests that global demand for x86 chips, the kind that Intel specializes in, continues to rise as the tech industry invests heavily in AI infrastructure. While GPUs, such as Nvidia’s H100s, continue to be the gold standard for training AI models, data center buildouts include a combination of GPUs and x86 CPUs, which power different AI workloads.
Intel noted in the earnings call that it hasn’t been able to supply its device customers with enough older chips, which aren’t as advanced as newer generations of AI semiconductors. This is partly because consumer demand for AI-powered PCs isn’t particularly strong, so device manufacturers are still seeking older—and cheaper—chips.
Intel also reported a net income of $4.1 billion. A year ago, the company said it had more than $16 billion in losses. Under Tan’s leadership, Intel has aggressively tried to cut costs, including by laying off 15 percent of its workforce.
The past few months have been busy for Intel. Along with the Trump administration, GPU giant Nvidia and the multinational tech conglomerate Softbank also funneled money into the company in exchange for common stock. During the most recent quarter, Intel received $5.7 billion from the US government, $5 billion from Nvidia, and $2 billion from Softbank. It received an additional $5.2 billion by selling off stakes in chipmaker Altera and the autonomous driving company Mobileye.
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Lauren Goode
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NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — If someone left a government job with a black eye, literally, ran a company with shrinking profits, and suddenly had federal investigators crawling over their business, you might say they’re having a bad year.
But most people are not Elon Musk.
The world’s richest man has only gotten richer this year and shareholders at Tesla, his electric car company, may make him wealthier yet by approving a trillion-dollar pay package in a bet he will succeed with new plans for a “robot army” and other technological breakthroughs even as some past promises remain unfulfilled.
“The genius of Elon Musk is keeping investors focused on what the company might look in like 5 or 10 years — while ignoring very near-term challenges,” marvels Garrett Nelson of CFRA Research. Or put more bluntly by Zacks Investment’s Brian Mulberry, “Your average CEO would likely not survive this.”
Musk started out the year with a side hustle — promising to cut $2 trillion in government spending as head of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, before cutting that pledge in half. In the end, DOGE posted only $240 billion in savings, according to its own notoriously unreliable estimates, and it’s not even clear those savings will hold as the Trump administration scrambles to refill many essential jobs DOGE cut that it shouldn’t have.
“There is a pattern of them announcing great big firings, and then turning about and saying, ’No, that’s a mistake,’” said Elaine Kamarck, a Brookings Institute senior fellow who has compiled a list of 17,000 positions being refilled. “They cut without a plan, without regard to function.”
Musk used the same slash-and-burn tactics after he took over Twitter and evidence of that backfiring has emerged this year, too.
In the past two months, he’s settled a pair of lawsuits filed by 2,000 former Twitter employees and executives alleging that they were pushed out under false pretenses or never given severance as promised. The amount the ex-workers got was undisclosed, but if they received even a fraction of the combined $628 million they were demanding, the cost will cut deeply for a company whose advertising has plunged since his takeover.
More bad news for Musk came Wednesday when Tesla announced earnings had plunged 37% in the third quarter. Vehicle sales rose 6% as customers rushed to take advantage of a federal tax credit before it expired last month, but the figure for the full year is expected to drop significantly as car buyers turned off by Musk’s right-wing political stances have boycotted the business.
This time a year ago Musk was telling investors sales could grow 20% to 30%.
The stock fell earlier this year as the bad news piled up. But after Musk appeared in the Oval Office in May for his farewell to DOGE sporting a shiner, it has doubled and is now posting a year-to-date gain of nearly 9% after the close of regular trading Wednesday. His net worth has also jumped — up $62 billion this year to $483 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
Investors are mostly buying Musk’s line that plunging car sales don’t matter as much now because the future of the company lies more with his new driverless robotaxis service, the energy storage business and building robots for the home and factory. To make his task worth while, Tesla’s directors are asking shareholders to sign off on his enormous new pay package at an annual meeting next month.
But there are big questions surrounding these endeavors, particularly the driverless cabs.
Musk’s robotaxis, which began picking up passengers in Austin, Texas, and San Francisco this summer, can’t yet be called driverless because they still require “safety monitors” who are ready to seize control in case something goes wrong, which occasionally happens. One of them drove down the opposing lane, for example.
The robotaxi plans need approval from regulators in various states even as the ones in Washington have swarmed the company.
They’ve opened four investigations into Tesla so far this year, including one into why it hasn’t reported accidents involving its self-driving software quickly to the government as required. Another launched earlier this month is looking into dozens of reported accidents in which Teslas using self-driving software ran red lights and broke other traffic rules, occasionally crashing into other vehicles and causing injuries.
Musk has disappointed before, talking big and missing deadlines repeatedly, only to deliver for shareholders eventually. Tesla investors who held on through a tough 2018 as the company struggled to produce its Model 3 vehicle at a profit, eventually saw their stock soar as sales jumped.
One money manager who rode that earlier surge then bought again earlier this year, says she’s confident Musk’s magic is still there and he can pull off the seemingly impossible again.
“He frequently teeters on the edge of disaster,” said Nancy Tengler in a statement, “and then pulls back just in the nick of time.”
One difference now is most other Tesla investors also believe this and have bought up the stock, leaving little room for error.
Shares of U.S. companies in the S&P 500 index are valued at 24 times what investors expect them to earn next year. By contrast, Tesla is trading at 250 times expected profits, enough to make you believe that Musk, instead of having a very bad year is having a spectacular one.
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Tesla might be an electric auto maker, but CEO Elon Musk has made clear that he thinks of it as much more: an innovator in artificial intelligence and software, a builder of world-shaking robots. He’s also argued that Tesla should be worth a lot more than it is today: up to $20 trillion, he posted in July, more than five times the current worth of Nvidia.
Musk has also made it clear that he wants to get paid, a lot. In November, Tesla shareholders will vote on the board’s proposal to pay the CEO a remarkable $1 trillion over the next decade. The deal would also increase Musk’s stake in Tesla from 13 percent to a quarter. But Musk would only get that big figure—and the extra control—if he hits a series of ambitious metrics, including 20 million vehicles delivered, 1 million robotaxis in commercial operation, and an $8.5 trillion valuation. And also, 1 million Optimus humanoid robots delivered.
On a call with investors on Wednesday, Musk locked on to that last point to make his most threatening argument for a gigantic payday yet. “My fundamental concern with regard to how much voting control I have at Tesla is, if I go ahead and build this enormous robot army, can I just be ousted at some point in the future?” he said. “If we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over this robot army? Not control, but a strong influence … I don’t feel comfortable building that robot army unless I have a strong influence.”
Generally, Musk talks about Tesla’s Optimus project as more of a force for peace than war. He’s said that Optimus will upend the job market and free humanity from the drudgery of work. (“Working will be optional, like growing your own vegetables, instead of buying them from the store,” he posted this week.) Elsewhere on the investor call Wednesday, he said that Tesla’s robots would “actually create a world where there is no poverty, where everyone has access to the finest medical care.”
Optimus, he added, “will be an incredible surgeon, and imagine if everyone had access to an incredible surgeon.” For Tesla, Optimus will be “an infinite money glitch,” Musk said, arguing that everyone will want a humanoid robot who can do their work for them.
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Aarian Marshall
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Tesla’s Q3 2025 update reports record vehicle deliveries and record energy storage deployments, alongside higher revenue, but earnings pressure persisted due to margin headwinds and a likely pull-forward of demand before U.S. EV tax credits expired in September.
Shares dipped about 1.4% in after-hours trading as investors appeared to brace for softer demand through the remainder of the year.
CEO Elon Musk is expected to give more detail on the company’s quarterly earnings call at 5:30 p.m. Eastern time.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
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Ashley Lutz
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Since Netflix stopped disclosing subscriber numbers in its earnings reports earlier this year, the company’s executives have shifted their focus to discussing innovation in advertising, A.I., and real-world ventures on earnings calls. The pivot signals Netflix’s gradual evolution from a pure streaming platform into a broader tech and entertainment powerhouse. On the scale of a crawl-walk-run spectrum, Netflix is “now squarely in the ‘walk’ phase,” co-CEO Greg Peters told analysts on the company’s third-quarter earnings call yesterday (Oct. 21). “We feel like we’ve established the fundamentals of the business now. Advertisers are excited about our growing scale,” he said.
Netflix’s advertising business, once considered a side experiment, saw its best quarter in the July-September period, proving it is now a reliable revenue stream in addition to subscription. Netflix said it doubled its U.S. upfront commitments, or pre-sold ad inventory for the coming year, during the quarter. Peters said Netflix’s in-house tech will soon support interactive ads that let viewers engage directly with campaigns.
Netflix is testing similar interactivity in live programming. Peters said the company is exploring real-time voting features for its expanding slate of live shows and events. This capability could debut in Star Search, the classic talent competition Netflix plans to revive in 2026.
For the July-September quarter, total revenue rose 17 percent year-over-year to $11.5 billion, while profit climbed 8 percent to $2.5 billion. Both figures came in below Wall Street expectations, primarily due to a one-time $619 million tax expense in Brazil, sending the company’s share price to fall 10 percent today. Without disclosing the exact subscriber number, co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the company now serves nearly a billion viewers globally.
Netflix is also delving deeper into generative A.I. to boost efficiency and creativity across its operations, from content localization and dubbing to personalized viewing recommendations. Recent examples include the use of A.I. in Happy Gilmore 2 to de-age characters in an opening flashback scene, and in Billionaires’ Bunker, a Spanish-language original created by the Money Heist team, where A.I. tools helped design sets and wardrobes.
In response to an analyst question about A.I. and tools like OpenAI’s video-creation platform Sora, Sarandos emphasized that Netflix isn’t concerned about A.I. replacing human creativity. “For what we do, it takes a great artist to make something great. A.I. doesn’t automatically make you a great storyteller if you’re not [one],” he said.
Beyond its advances in ad tech and A.I. applications, Netflix continues expanding its brand beyond the screen. The company is building a real-world ecosystem that spans merchandising, gaming, live events and new consumer experiences. Initiatives include a recent Spotify podcast partnership, a “Netflix House” entertainment center rollout, a Netflix-branded restaurant in Las Vegas, and new toy and collectibles collaborations with Mattel and Hasbro tied to KPop Demon Hunters.
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Andy Meek
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Capital One is reaping the rewards of continued investment in tech and talent as they aid its AI strategy. “We are in the 13th year of an all-in technology transformation,” Chief Executive Richard Fairbank, said during the third quarter earnings call on Oct. 21. “This transformation has been from the bottom of the tech stack […]
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Vaidik Trivedi
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General Motors anticipates a smaller impact from tariffs and is boosting its full-year adjusted earnings forecast as its third-quarter performance topped Wall Street’s expectations.
Shares surged more than 9% before the market open on Tuesday.
The automaker reduced its expectations for the full-year gross impact from tariffs to a range of $3.5 billion to $4.5 billion. Its previous guidance was $4 billion to $5 billion. GM anticipates its tariff mitigation actions will offset about 35% of the impact due to a lower tariff base.
On Friday President Donald Trump gave domestic automakers additional relief from tariffs on auto parts, extending what was supposed to have been a short-term rebate until 2030. It’s part of a proclamation Trump signed Friday that also made official a 25% import tax on medium and heavy duty trucks, starting Nov. 1.
The action reflected the administration’s efforts to use tariffs to promote American manufacturing while also trying to shield the auto sector from the higher costs that Trump’s import taxes have created for parts and raw materials.
“The MSRP offset program will help make U.S.-produced vehicles more competitive over the next five years, and GM is very well positioned as we invest to increase our already significant domestic sourcing and manufacturing footprint,” GM CEO Mary Barra said in a letter to shareholders.
For the three months ended Sept. 30, GM earned $1.33 billion, or $1.35 per share. A year earlier the automaker earned $3.06 billion, or $2.68 per share.
Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, were $2.80 per share. That easily beat the $2.28 per share that analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research were calling for.
Revenue totaled $48.59 billion, topping Wall Street’s estimate of $44.27 billion.
GM now foresees full-year adjusted earnings between $9.75 and $10.50 per share. Its prior outlook was for $8.25 to $10 per share. Analysts polled by FactSet predict full-year earnings of $9.46 per share.
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U.S. stock futures pointed higher on Sunday evening as Wall Street looks ahead to a big week for the U.S.-China trade war, corporate earnings, and economic data.
President Donald Trump again set the tone for the market after he further softened his rhetoric on China in an interview with Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures.
“I’m not looking to destroy China,” he said, contrasting with his remarks in August when he said he holds “incredible cards” that “would destroy China,” if he chose to use them.
Earlier this month, he announced an additional 100% tariff and software restrictions on China, which has a stranglehold on the world’s supply of rare earths and imposed tighter export controls that threaten a wide range of industries.
Last week, stocks rebounded sharply after Trump said “Don’t worry about China” and vowed that everything will be fine. A similar pattern is playing out again this weekend.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones industrial average rose 54 points, or 0.12%. S&P 500 futures were up 0.15%, and Nasdaq futures added 0.20%.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury was flat at 4.011%. The U.S. dollar was down 0.06% against the euro and up 0.14% against the yen.
Gold climbed 1% to $4,253.10 per ounce. U.S. oil futures were steady at $57.55 a barrel, and Brent crude was virtually unchanged at $61.27.
Investors will get another update on the trade war as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is due to meet Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng this week to continue talks ahead of a meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping at the end of this month on the sidelines of a regional economic summit in South Korea.
Meanwhile, the third-quarter earnings season ramps up after big banks reported blowout results, with top tech companies on tap.
On Tuesday, Netflix and Texas Instruments are due. On Wednesday, Tesla and IBM will report, while Intel is scheduled for Thursday.
And despite the government shutdown, the consumer price index report for September will be issued by the Labor Department on Friday after key personnel were recalled. The report will allow for Social Security to make cost of living adjustments.
Economists expect a 0.4% monthly uptick, matching August’s pace, and a 3.1% annual increase, accelerating from 2.9% in August.
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Jason Ma
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Dow Jones futures rose slightly Sunday evening, along with S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq futures. Tesla (TSLA), GE Vernova (GEV), Netflix (NFLX) and GE Aerospace (GE) headline big earnings with the September CPI inflation report due Friday. But the biggest market news may be U.S.-China trade talks. The stock market rally enjoyed strong weekly gains. But the major indexes and…
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Dow Jones futures will open Sunday evening, along with S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq futures. Tesla (TSLA), GE Vernova (GEV), Netflix (NFLX) and GE Aerospace (GE) headline a big earnings week capped by the September CPI inflation report. The stock market rally enjoyed strong weekly gains. But after Monday’s rebound, the major indexes and many leaders have seen big intraday…
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NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Credit card giant American Express posted a 16% jump in third-quarter profits on Friday, helped by increased card spending, particularly among its wealthiest card members. The company raised its full-year profit forecasts as a result.
The New York-based company said it earned $2.9 billion in the quarter, up 16% from $2.51 billion in the same period a year earlier. On a per-share basis, the company earned $4.14, compared to $3.49 a year earlier. The results beat analysts’ expectations.
Once again, AmEx benefited from increased spending on its cards across all its products in the quarter. The company last month refreshed its iconic Platinum Card, increasing the perks and rewards earned on the card but also increasing the annual fee to $895.
The high net worth credit card market has become a hotbed of competition, particularly this summer and fall when the major credit card companies launched new products or refreshed existing cards in order to entice customers to spend on their products. JPMorgan Chase revamped the Chase Sapphire Reserve Card in June, and Citigroup launched Citi Strata in September.
AmEx shared data with investors that indicate customers were not turned off by the higher annual fee and increased competition from new products. The company got 500,000 requests from customers to convert their card to the new mirrored finish in three weeks, which company executives expected to get 500,000 requests by year-end.
“The initial customer demand and engagement exceeded our expectations, with new U.S. Platinum account acquisitions doubling compared to pre-refresh levels,” said Steve Squeri, CEO and chairman, in a statement.
Average spend on AmEx cards in the quarter was $6,387, the company said, up 5% from a year earlier. Card members continue to increasingly carry a balance on their cards as well, with the company now reporting $138.95 billion in loans, up 8% from a year earlier.
American Express now expects to post earnings per share of $15.20 to $15.50 for the full year.
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Interactive Brokers Group IBKR -1.79%decrease; red down pointing triangle
The online brokerage platform said Thursday that client trading volumes in stocks and options climbed 67% and 27%, respectively, in the quarter. Futures volume, meanwhile, decreased 7%. Customer accounts increased by 32% to 4.1 million, with customer equity up 40% to $757.5 billion.
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United Airlines, which has increasingly tapped into premium offerings and brand-loyalty programs, expects surging revenue in these areas to deliver a strong finish to 2025—so long as the ongoing government shutdown doesn’t dampen travel demand.
During United’s third-quarter earnings call today (Oct. 16), CEO Scott Kirby told analysts that the airline’s cancellation rates and on-time performance have remained steady so far. “There hasn’t really been a measurable impact in the first couple of weeks of October. [But] the longer this drags on, obviously the risks will grow on both of those points, so I hope our politicians will figure out how to get in a room, compromise and get something done,” he said.
The shutdown, now in its third week, is disrupting flights nationwide due to staffing shortages at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The shutdown has placed added strain on air traffic controllers, many of whom are expected to work with reduced or no pay until the government reopens.
Kirby said most controllers continue to show up for duty, but warned that a prolonged shutdown would eventually take a toll. “Every day that goes by, the risk to the U.S. economy grows. I hope we will avoid an unforced error here,” he said.
Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian raised similar concerns last week, cautioning that “cracks will soon emerge” if the shutdown isn’t resolved “beyond another 10 days or so.”
United and Delta—the nation’s two largest airlines by market capitalization—are better positioned than most to weather potential turbulence. Both carriers have surged ahead of rivals by doubling down on premium seats and cultivating customer loyalty.
Between July and September, United reported $15.2 billion in revenue, up 2.6 percent year-over-year but slightly below analyst expectations. Net income came in at $949 million, a modest 1 percent decline. A bright spot is the premium cabins, where revenue rose 6 percent, while loyalty program revenue jumped 9 percent from a year ago. The company expects that loyalty-driven momentum will help it post record-high operating revenue in the final quarter of 2025.
To sustain that growth, United plans to invest more than $1 billion next year in enhancing its customer experience. The upgrades include adding more seatback screens and extra legroom, increasing food spending by 25 percent and equipping its entire fleet with SpaceX’s Starlink wifi by 2027.
Delta has already benefited from a pivot to luxury. The airline reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue and profit earlier this month and expects its premium cabins to surpass economy-class sales for the first time next year.
Kirby said United’s success reflects a long-term bet on a fundamental shift in traveler behavior. For decades, he noted, airlines were viewed as interchangeable commodities mainly chosen on price and schedule. But as most carriers now offer comparable routes and fares, loyalty and brand differentiation have become the new battleground.
“What we’ve proven, and continue to prove in the last few years, is that it is possible to transform into a brand-loyal airline,” he said.
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Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly
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