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Tag: Industrial Electronics

  • Broadcom logs earnings beat, but chip stock edges lower

    Broadcom logs earnings beat, but chip stock edges lower

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    Broadcom Inc. topped profit expectations for its latest quarter, but shares of the chip company were falling in Thursday’s aftermarket action.

    The company recorded fiscal fourth-quarter net income of $3.5 billion, or $8.25 a share, whereas it posted net income of $3.3 billion, or $7.83 a share, in the year-earlier period.

    On an adjusted basis, Broadcom
    AVGO,
    +2.06%
    earned $11.06 a share, up from $10.45 a share a year before, while analysts tracked by FactSet were modeling $10.96 a share.

    Revenue increased to $9.30 billion from $8.93 billion, while the FactSet consensus was for $9.28 billion. Broadcom generated $7.33 billion in revenue from semiconductor solutions, up 3%, along with $1.97 billion in revenue from infrastructure solutions, up 7%.

    Results were “driven by investments in accelerators and network connectivity for AI by hyperscalers,” Chief Executive Hock Tan said in a release.

    Broadcom’s stock was off about 2% in Thursday’s extended session.

    See also: Nvidia’s stock is now this chip analyst’s top pick — knocking out AMD

    For the new fiscal year, Broadcom anticipates $50 billion in revenue, when including contributions from the recently closed acquisition of VMware that may not be fully reflected in consensus estimates. The company also expects adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to be about 60% of projected revenue; it was 65% of revenue in the most recent fiscal year.

    The company expects its semiconductor segment to sustain a mid- to high-single-digit revenue growth rate in fiscal 2024.

    Opinion: AMD is poised for huge AI growth in 2024 and the stock market is paying attention

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  • AMD wins high praise for AI advancements as its stock soars 6%

    AMD wins high praise for AI advancements as its stock soars 6%

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    While Advanced Micro Devices Inc. shares didn’t enjoy a Wednesday bump during the company’s artificial-intelligence event, they were rallying sharply Thursday as analysts reflected on the chip maker’s presentation.

    Chief Executive Lisa Su and her team “put together one of the most impressive new product event/launches by our reckoning in the last decade, perhaps ever,” Rosenblatt Securities analyst Hans Mosesmann wrote in a note to clients.

    The launch of AMD’s
    AMD,
    +7.09%
    MI300X AI/graphics-processing-unit accelerator “was not just a speeds and feeds geek fest (it was that for sure, with AMD claiming superiority in AI inferencing), but an industry movement coalescing around the concept of ‘open’ sourced technologies are preferred (demanded really), to address the insanely fast/accelerating life-changing thing that AI has become,” Mosesmann continued.

    Opinion: AMD’s new products represent the first real threat to Nvidia’s AI dominance

    He was also impressed by the company’s talk of its software platform ROCm, which he thinks is catching up to Nvidia Corp.’s
    NVDA,
    +1.54%
    CUDA.

    “Of course, Nvidia is not going away, and we are quite sure will remain the dominant AI player for years to come but AMD we feel made the case yesterday that they will be an important AI innovator on a secular basis,” Mosesmann noted, as he kept his outperform rating and $200 target price on the stock.

    AMD shares were up 6% in Thursday morning trading.

    Baird’s Tristan Gerra was also impressed.

    “Rapidly unfolding hyperscaler engagements, highly competitive AI architecture specs, along with accelerated new product roadmap, bode well for share gains and continued acceleration in AI-related revenue for AMD beyond 2024, while faster-than-expected rate of adoption so far could potentially drive upside in the AI revenue outlook for 2024, in our view,” he wrote.

    Read: Nvidia and Microsoft CEOs say industrial companies will benefit most from AI. Here are stocks to put on your watch list.

    Gerra also sees the potential for “high-volume deployments,” thanks to the “significant software milestones” AMD is showing. He rates the stock at outperform with a $125 target price.

    TD Cowen’s Matthew Ramsay said that AMD’s event reinforced his belief that the company “is well positioned to meaningfully participate” in the large total addressable market for AI accelerators.

    The company called out Microsoft Corp.
    MSFT,
    -0.01%    ,
    Meta Platforms Inc.
    META,
    +2.41%
    and Oracle Corp.
    ORCL,
    -0.08%
    as customers, announcements that were “strong” but not “surprising,” in Ramsay’s view.

    “We remain encouraged that AMD is making an impressive case (and is getting customer support) to provide adaptive computing solutions for both training and inference in increasingly large [generative-AI] infrastructure builds,” he wrote. “We believe this signifies a strong AI strategy of delivering a broad portfolio of [central processing unit], GPU, and [field-programmable gate array] assets, with open software that enables easily deployed AI workloads while leveraging the company’s existing partnerships to accelerate its AI ramps at-scale.”

    Ramsay has an outperform rating and $130 target price on AMD shares.

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  • The Cost of Doing Business With China? A $40,000 Dinner With Xi Jinping Might Be Just the Start

    The Cost of Doing Business With China? A $40,000 Dinner With Xi Jinping Might Be Just the Start

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    Updated Nov. 28, 2023 12:54 am ET

    Broadcom Chief Executive Hock Tan shelled out $40,000 to sit at Xi Jinping’s table for the Chinese leader’s recent dinner in San Francisco with the heads of American businesses. Tan had a lot more at stake—a $69 billion deal he was waiting on China to approve.

    For months, Chinese regulators wouldn’t clear the U.S. chipmaker’s bid to buy enterprise software developer VMware, leading Broadcom to put off its date for completion of the deal—first announced in May 2022—three times. Beijing had held up previous mergers involving U.S. companies. Intel’s planned acquisition of Israeli firm Tower Semiconductor, for more than $5 billion, was scuttled in August after Chinese regulators failed to approve it.

    Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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  • Nvidia stock under pressure after report of AI chip delay for China

    Nvidia stock under pressure after report of AI chip delay for China

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    Shares of Nvidia Corp. fell in premarket trading on Friday, following a report that the tech giant will delay the launch of one of its new artificial intelligence chips destined for China.

    Nvidia will now roll out one of three big AI chips for that market early next year Reuters reported, citing sources. Earlier this month, a report surfaced that Nvidia planned the trio of AI chips for China after the U.S. government blocked it from selling high-end chips in that country.

    The…

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  • Walmart, Nvidia, Novo Nordisk, Vista Outdoor, GM, and More Stock Market Movers

    Walmart, Nvidia, Novo Nordisk, Vista Outdoor, GM, and More Stock Market Movers

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    Stock futures pointed higher Friday as Wall Street returned for a shortened trading session following the Thanksgiving holiday. Retailers will be in focus on Black Friday, which marks the unofficial start to the Christmas shopping season.

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  • Nvidia ends an earnings recession and is helping to reshape corporate profits

    Nvidia ends an earnings recession and is helping to reshape corporate profits

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    With yet another blowout earnings report, Nvidia Corp. has ended an earnings recession in the U.S. and helped to solidify the continuation of a drastic change to corporate profits.

    Nvidia NVDA on Tuesday rode enduring demand for hardware that is essential for artificial-intelligence tasks to yet another record quarter, as revenue tripled and profit zoomed more than 1,300% higher year over year. Nvidia recorded earnings of more than $9 billion in just three months, a total it had never achieved in a full year before 2022.

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  • S&P 500 futures stall near four-month highs as traders eye Nvidia earnings

    S&P 500 futures stall near four-month highs as traders eye Nvidia earnings

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    U.S. stock futures on Tuesday showed the November rally stalling ahead of results from AI chipmaker Nvidia.

    How are stock-index futures trading

    On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA rose 204 points, or 0.58%, to 35151, the S&P 500 SPX increased 33 points, or 0.74%, to 4547, and the Nasdaq Composite COMP gained 159 points, or 1.13%, to 14285.

    What’s driving markets

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  • Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia—What Tech Stocks Hedge Funds Are Buying and Selling

    Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia—What Tech Stocks Hedge Funds Are Buying and Selling

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    It’s filing season for a string of major hedge funds, and big tech names like Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia were among the most-traded equities in the third quarter.

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  • Soros snaps up tech stocks in Q3, but dumps some of the biggest names

    Soros snaps up tech stocks in Q3, but dumps some of the biggest names

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    Soros Fund Management, the investment firm founded by billionaire George Soros, took new positions or bulked up on IPOs and a number of tech names during the third quarter.

    But it sold off small holdings of some of the largest — like Nvidia Corp. and Microsoft Corp. — as well as electric-vehicle maker Rivian Automotive.

    According to a filing on Tuesday, the firm during the third quarter bought up 325,000 shares of chip designer Arm Holdings
    ARM,
    +3.37%    ,
    which went public in September, for $17.4 million. It also bought smaller stakes in recent IPOs such as Maplebear Inc.
    CART,
    +1.25%    ,
    better known as grocery-delivery platform Instacart, and digital-marketing firm Klaviyo Inc.
    KVYO,
    +6.90%    .
    Those purchases were disclosed as investors remain cautious on new IPOs.

    Elsewhere, the fund took a new position, of around 41,000 shares, in Apple Inc.
    AAPL,
    +1.43%    .
    And it did so as well for Datadog Inc.
    DDOG,
    +4.58%    ,
    buying 62,000 shares during the quarter. It also bought up 574,962 shares of Splunk, and took fresh positions in Snowflake Inc.
    SNOW,
    +4.51%
    and Taiwan Semiconductor
    TSM,
    +2.58%    .

    Soros also packed on more to some of its other tech holdings. It added 125,000 shares to its stake in Uber Technologies Inc.
    UBER,
    +3.14%    ,
    boosting its position by 16.6% for a total of 878,955 shares. It also bought 42,000 more shares of another gig-economy player, DoorDash Inc.
    DASH,
    +4.37%    ,
    a 30.9% increase for 178,075 shares.

    While Soros boosted its stake in General Motors
    GM,
    +4.83%    ,
    it sold off its 4.2 million shares in Rivian
    RIVN,
    +4.39%    .
    The firm also sold off its positions — of roughly 10,000 shares apiece — in tech giants Microsoft
    MSFT,
    +0.98%
    and Nvidia
    NVDA,
    +2.13%    .

    Soros Fund Management also sold off its stake in Walt Disney Co.
    DIS,
    +1.82%    .

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  • Dow ends nearly 400 points higher as tech rally leads stocks to highest close since September

    Dow ends nearly 400 points higher as tech rally leads stocks to highest close since September

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    U.S. stocks ended sharply higher Friday, more than shaking off weakness seen the previous session in the aftermath of a poor Treasury bond auction and fresh signs that interest rates may stay higher for longer.

    Technology stocks drove the bounce, with the Nasdaq Composite leading major indexes to the upside as it and the S&P 500 logged their highest finishes since September.

    What happened

    • The Dow Jones Industrial Average
      DJIA
      rose 391.16 points, or 1.2%, to close at 34,283.10.

    • The S&P 500
      SPX
      ended with a gain of 67.89 points, or 1.6%, at 4,415.24.

    • The Nasdaq Composite
      COMP
      advanced 276.66 points, or 2%, to finish at 13,798.10.

    The rally left the Dow with a weekly gain of 0.7%, while the S&P 500 advanced 1.3% and the Nasdaq booked a rise of 2.4%. The Dow saw its highest close since Sept. 20, while the S&P 500 ended at its highest since Sept. 19 and the Nasdaq at its highest since Sept. 14.

    Market drivers

    Tech was in the driver’s seat. Shares of Microsoft Corp.
    MSFT,
    +2.49%
    jumped 2.5%, with the Dow component scoring its third record close in four sessions. Intel Corp. shares
    INTC,
    +2.80%
    rose 2.8% to lead Dow gainers.

    Meanwhile, the S&P 500 tested important chart resistance at the 4,400 to 4,415 level, which marks the confluence of previous resistance and the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement of the July-October drop, according to Matthew Weller, global head of research at Forex.com, in a note (see chart below).


    Forex.com

    “From a bigger picture perspective, bulls will need to see the index conclusively break above 4415 before declaring that the post-July streak of lower lows and lower highs is over,” Weller wrote.

    The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite ended their longest winning streaks since November 2021 on Thursday, after a poorly-received $24 billion sale of 30-year Treasury bonds.

    A calmer bond market may have helped set the tone for stocks. The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond
    BX:TMUBMUSD30Y
    fell 3.2 basis points to 4.733%, after it nearly notched its biggest one-day jump since June 2022. The yield still saw a weekly decline, its third straight.

    It was unclear whether the Treasury auction had been affected by a reported ransomware attack against the U.S. unit of the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China that apparently disrupted the U.S. Treasury market.

    See: How ransomware attack on ICBC rattled the Treasury market and shook up a 30-year bond auction

    Thursday’s setback was also tied to comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who told an International Monetary Fund panel on Thursday that the central bank was wary of “head fakes” from inflation, and the “2% goal was not assured.”

    Much of Powell’s language was nearly identical to remarks he made on Nov. 1, when investors rallied stocks and bonds after the Fed chair didn’t explicitly commit to a further interest rate hike. But the subsequent rally for stocks after the Nov. 1 Fed meeting, with the S&P 500 jumping more than 6% over eight days, and a 50 basis point drop in the 10-year Treasury yield were “overdone and not governed by facts,” said Tom Essaye, founder of Sevens Report Research, in a note.

    “Meanwhile, if we think about what the Fed said last week, namely that the rise in the 10-year yield was doing the Fed’s work for it and as a result they may not have to hike rates, then the short/sharp decline in the 10-year yield we’ve seen could essentially remove the reason for the Fed not having to hike rates — and that could put a rate hike back on the table!” he wrote. “That’s essentially what Powell reminded us of yesterday and that, along with the poor Treasury auction, pushed yields higher,” setting up pressure on stocks.

    U.S. consumer sentiment fell in November for the fourth month in a row due to worries about higher interest rates as well as war in the Middle East. The preliminary reading of the sentiment survey declined to 60.4 from 63.8 in October, the University of Michigan said Friday. It’s the weakest reading since May.

    Investors were also tuning into more comments by Fed officials Friday, including San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly, who said she didn’t know if rates were high enough to bring inflation back down to the central bank’s 2% target.

    Companies in focus

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  • Plug Power, Trade Desk, Doximity, Unity Software, Illumina, Wynn, and More Stock Market Movers

    Plug Power, Trade Desk, Doximity, Unity Software, Illumina, Wynn, and More Stock Market Movers

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    These Stocks Are Moving the Most Today: Plug Power, Trade Desk, Doximity, Unity Software, Illumina, Wynn, and More

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  • Sluggish EV and auto sales could continue next year, based on what these chip makers just said

    Sluggish EV and auto sales could continue next year, based on what these chip makers just said

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    A couple of lesser-known chip companies and a battery maker have confirmed growing fears among investors about the slowdown in electric-vehicle and overall auto sales, which appears likely to continue into next year.

    Monday was loaded with bad news from companies that make industrial chips for the auto industry, as earnings reports from On Semiconductor Corp.
    ON,
    -21.77%
    in the morning and Lattice Semiconductor Inc.
    LSCC,
    -4.05%
    in the afternoon disappointed Wall Street with their forecasts.

    If inflation and high interest rates continue into next year, which is feasible, the slump in auto sales is expected to continue.

    “We think it will carry through into the first part of next year, with most cycles running six to nine months,” said David Williams, an analyst with Benchmark who had predicted that the outlook for On Semi would have to be tempered.  “However, the reduced consumer buying power and overall macro backdrop will likely keep buyers on the sidelines for the next couple of quarters.”

    On Semi said that because of the shortfall in an order from one unnamed automotive customer in Europe, it now expects to ship $200 million less this year of its silicon carbide chips, which are used in EVs. The company did not give further details on its customer, but pointed out that at $800 million, its 2023 revenue will still be four times higher than 2022.

    Last year, On Semi touted a new plant in Hudson, N.H., to make chips out of silicon carbide, an energy-efficient semiconductor material made of silicon and carbon, and predicted those chips would exceed $1 billion in sales in 2023.

    “EVs are going to grow,” On Semi Chief Executive Hassane El-Khoury said Monday. “They’re going to grow for us in the fourth quarter as well. It’s just not going to grow in the fourth quarter at the rate that we expected… I think EVs are a long-term growth opportunity — even with the backdrop of a lot of the headlines that we’re seeing, customer designs have not slowed down.”

    Even as company executives spun the positives, investors were rattled and On’s shares tumbled nearly 22%. Lattice Semiconductor also disappointed Wall Street with its outlook for the fourth quarter. Lattice sells chips that are used in advanced driver-assistance systems in cars, and shares tumbled 13% in extended trading after its fourth-quarter outlook came in lower than expected, due to fewer customers in Asia.

    “In the last kind of four to six weeks of Q3, we started to see demand soften from our industrial and automotive customers,” Lattice CEO Jim Anderson told analysts. “I would say that it was really localized to the Asia geography, and we expect that softness we started to see at the end of Q3 extend into the current quarter.”

    In addition, Tesla Inc.’s battery partner, Panasonic Holdings
    6752,
    -8.35%
    of Japan, said it was slashing its production by 60% due to slower sales of some models to Tesla. That fueled a 4.8% drop in Tesla stock
    TSLA,
    -4.79%    ,
    to its lowest close since late May. Investors have been nervous about the EV market, especially after Ford
    F,
    -1.91%
    executives said last week that consumers were unwilling right now to pay a premium for EVs.

    Semiconductor companies are often harbingers of future end-product demand in a wide variety of industries. Now that automakers use so many semiconductors, they can also be a big indicator of auto demand, especially in the hot arena of EVs. And those indicators don’t look good in the short term.

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  • Big Tech earnings have been strong, but Apple is about to answer the thousand-dollar question

    Big Tech earnings have been strong, but Apple is about to answer the thousand-dollar question

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    While the stock market reactions may not prove it, Big Tech is four-for-four so far this earnings reporting season.

    Alphabet Inc.
    GOOG,
    -0.03%

    GOOGL,
    -0.09%    ,
    Amazon.com Inc.
    AMZN,
    +6.83%    ,
    Meta Platforms Inc.
    META,
    +2.91%
    and Microsoft Corp.
    MSFT,
    +0.59%
    all beat earnings and revenue expectations for the latest quarter, showing, among other things that the advertising market was healthy in the latest quarter and that software spending is holding up.

    But one more major test looms in the week ahead. Apple Inc.
    AAPL,
    +0.80%
    is due to deliver September-quarter results on Thursday and those earnings will answer a key question: Are consumers still so willing to purchase thousand-dollar iPhones in the current economy?

    Results from other companies in recent weeks have painted a mixed picture of consumer spending. Visa Inc.
    V,
    -0.87%    ,
    Mastercard Inc.
    MA,
    -0.14%
    and American Express Co.
    AXP,
    -1.42%
    say that spending remains resilient, but there are also signs that cracks are starting to form in categories deemed non-essential. Just look at Align Technology Inc.
    ALGN,
    +0.20%    ,
    the maker of Invisalign orthodontic aligners, which saw its stock plunge last week after noting that people seem to be putting off dental and orthodontic visits.

    Read: Invisalign maker’s stock craters after soft earnings, but analysts still say it’s a buy

    Granted, some might say that iPhones are glorified necessities these days for Apple fans, even with their high price tags. But Apple conducted an effective price increase on its iPhone 15 Pro model when it rolled out its new phones in September, all while delivering a mostly incremental suite of feature upgrades across all its latest models. Will the new phones prove enticing enough in a period of stretched budgets?

    Just judging by S&P 500
    SPX
    results so far in the aggregate, the odds would seem to be in Apple’s favor for a beat this quarter. About half of index components have already reported, and 78% have posted earnings upside, while 62% have surprised positively on the top line, according to FactSet.

    Revenue will be the key item for Apple, as consensus expectations call for a small decline on the metric, which would mark the fourth consecutive year-over-year drop. It’s also worth noting that companies on the whole haven’t been topping revenue estimates by their usual margin. S&P 500 components in aggregate have reported revenue 0.8% above expectations, which compares with a five-year average of 2.0%, FactSet Senior Earnings Analyst John Butters wrote in a recent report.

    Apple’s report could also highlight the impact of currency on corporate results, as the company generates more than half of its revenue internationally.

    “Given the stronger U.S. dollar in recent months, are S&P 500 companies with more international revenue exposure reporting lower (year-over-year) earnings and revenues for Q3 compared to S&P 500 companies with more domestic revenue exposure?” Butters asked. “The answer is yes.”

    This week in earnings

    Many U.S. investors in financial-technology companies likely hadn’t heard of European payments player Worldline SA
    WLN,
    +9.06%
    before last week, but a warning from the French company about deteriorating conditions in Europe helped send shares of PayPal Holdings Inc.
    PYPL,
    -2.63%
    and Block Inc.
    SQ,
    -3.98%
    sharply lower Wednesday, in a selloff one analyst deemed an overreaction. Those companies will look to reassure Wall Street about the health of their businesses with their own reports this week. Plus, while not a payments name, SoFi Technologies Inc.
    SOFI,
    -0.43%
    will provide another read on the fintech sector. Investors will be watching to see how the end of the student-loan moratorium impacted student lending volumes.

    The week ahead will also shed light on how consumers’ dining preferences have evolved in the current economy. Starbucks Corp.
    SBUX,
    -0.70%    ,
    Dine Brands Global Inc.
    DIN,
    -0.12%    ,
    Cheesecake Factory Inc.
    CAKE,
    -0.47%
    and Sweetgreen Inc.
    SG,
    +0.59%
    are among names on the docket. Plus, amid concerns about the impact of GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy on eating habits, Kraft Heinz Co.’s management will be in the spotlight.

    Don’t miss: What exactly are patients taking new weight-loss drugs eating and what are they avoiding? Bernstein asked them.

    The call to put on your calendar

    You can’t spell Advanced Micro Devices without AI (sort of): Nvidia Corp.
    NVDA,
    +0.43%
    has been ruling the chip world this year thanks to its dominance with the sort of hardware needed to power the corporate AI fervor. Investors will be watching Tuesday afternoon to see how quickly Advanced Micro Devices Inc.’s
    AMD,
    +2.95%
    own AI story is coming together. “The AMD narrative feels all about their data center (and, particularly, their AI story) right now,” Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon wrote in a note to clients. “In the near term the achievability of their 2H data-center growth (guided to 50% half-over-half) will be the question.” Rasgon expects AMD to discuss recent customer wins for its MI300X chip, though he thinks it will take time for the company to see “real volume.”

    The number to watch

    PayPal transaction margins: Shares of the one-time investor darling are trading at their lowest levels since May 2017, and the latest source of anguish for Wall Street is the company’s transaction margins. PayPal’s lower-margin unbranded checkout business has been growing more quickly than its higher-margin branded checkout product, a trend that’s been weighing on overall transaction margins. Barclays analyst Ramsey El-Assal expects the third quarter to mark a bottom on the metric before trends stabilize in the fourth quarter. “We do not believe the stock is crowded on the long or short side into earnings, as investors lack conviction regarding the magnitude of transaction margin headwinds in Q3,” he wrote in a recent preview. “In any case, we view Q3 as a potential clearing event.” PayPal posts results Wednesday afternoon.

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  • Intel cheers foundry wins, AI traction, and its stock is roaring after earnings

    Intel cheers foundry wins, AI traction, and its stock is roaring after earnings

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    Intel Corp. shares were popping nearly 8% in Thursday’s extended session after the chip maker delivered a rosy forecast, while talking up new customers for its foundry business and traction related to artificial intelligence.

    For the fourth quarter, Intel
    INTC,
    -0.94%
    anticipates $14.6 billion to $15.6 billion in revenue, whereas analysts were looking for $14.4 billion. The company is also modeling 44 cents in adjusted earnings per share, while the FactSet consensus was for 33 cents.

    “While the industry has seen some wallet share shifts between CPU and accelerators over the last several quarters, as well as some inventory burn in the server market, we see signs of normalization as we enter Q4,” Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger said on the earnings call.

    Gelsinger expressed confidence about Intel’s positioning — and the future of central processing units — as AI becomes more dominant in the technology world.

    “Training of these large models is interesting, but the deployment of those models, the inferencing use of those models is what we believe is truly spectacular for the future,” he said. “And…some of that will run on the accelerators, but a huge amount of that is going to run, right, on Xeons.”

    He also shared that Intel now has three customers for its 18A foundry process technology that have made commitments. The company previously disclosed one customer made prepayments, but Gelsinger added Thursday that Intel has two other customers.

    “The other thing that we saw this quarter, which was a little bit unexpected, was this huge surge in interest for AI customers and Intel’s advanced packaging technology,” he said.

    Intel is in the midst of a big push to build a foundry business through which it would manufacture chips for other companies, though not all on Wall Street are sold yet on the move.

    The company also delivered an upbeat third-quarter report, easily clearing Wall Street’s bar on profit and topping expectations on revenue as well.

    The company reported net income of $297 million, or 7 cents a share, compared with $1.0 billion, or 25 cents a share, in the year-earlier period. On an adjusted basis, Intel earned 41 cents a share, down from 59 cents a share a year prior, while analysts were looking for 22 cents a share.

    Revenue dropped to $14.2 billion from $15.3 billion, while the FactSet consensus called for $13.6 billion.

    The company saw revenue from its personal-computer segment, known as client-computing, drop 3% to $7.9 billion, whereas analysts were looking for $7.3 billion. Data-center and AI revenue fell 10% to $3.8 billion, narrowly missing the FactSet consensus, which was $3.9 billion.

    Intel recorded a 45.8% adjusted gross margin, compared with 39.8% in the second quarter. The company’s forecast had been for about 43%.

    Intel shares have climbed 24% so far this year, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average
    DJIA
    has lost about 1%.

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  • ‘Nobody in their right mind would do it.’ Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says he wouldn’t start a company if he had a do-over.

    ‘Nobody in their right mind would do it.’ Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says he wouldn’t start a company if he had a do-over.

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    “ ‘You have to get yourself to believe that it’s not that hard, because it’s way harder than you think. If I go taking all of my knowledge now and I go back, and I said, I’m going to endure that whole journey again, I think it’s too much. It is just too much.’ ”


    — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang

    That was one of the world’s most visionary tech-sector leaders, Nvidia
    NVDA,
    -1.86%
    CEO Jensen Huang, who explained that building Nvidia was “a million times harder than I expected it to be” as he theorized that “nobody in their right mind would do it” if they were aware of the true personal toll.

    The Taiwan-born 60-year-old, whose family relocated to Thailand and then the U.S. in his youth and is said to have co-founded Nvidia in 1993 following a meeting at a Denny’s restaurant in San Jose, Calif., after stints at AMD
    AMD,
    -0.49%
    and LSI Logic, wouldn’t start his own company today, he said, if he were 30 years old. 

    The tech titan, however, posited in a recent interview with the podcast Acquired that a “superpower” among entrepreneurs is the ability to trick themselves into believing “it’s not that hard.”

    Huang said that his biggest fear remains, as it has been since Nvidia’s early days, is failing to facilitate success among workers. “I’m afraid of the same things today that I was in the very beginning of this company, which is letting the employees down.”

    Huang, who according to FactSet owns a 3.5% stake in Nvidia (market cap: $1.04 trillion), explained in the podcast interview that workers joining a company end up believing in its vision and taking on its aspirations as their own.

    “You have a lot of people who joined your company because they believe in your hopes and dreams, and they’ve adopted it as their hopes and dreams,” Huang said. “You want to be right for them. You want to be successful for them. You want them to be able to build a great life. … The greatest fear is that you let them down.”

    In explaining how he persevered, despite doubts and challenges, in building Nvidia into the company it is today, Huang credited a “support network” of people who never gave up on him during the three-decade journey.

    He explained that the experience of leading Nvidia during those periods when its share price has been in seeming free fall was almost “too much to endure,” after the company was first listed on public markets in 1999. “It’s embarrassing no matter how you think about it.”

    His comments come as Nvidia’s share price has, again, been in retreat, losing ground following a major 245% surge over the previous 12 months. 

    More recently, the Santa Clara–based company’s stock was hit by the Biden administration’s decision to introduce tougher controls on the export of semiconductors to China. 

    Read: One semiconductor company is expected to grow sales nearly as quickly as Nvidia through 2025

    Looking ahead, Huang said developments in artificial intelligence now pose an “enormous” opportunity for companies like Nvidia. “The market opportunity has grown by probably a thousand times,” he said.

    He said AI will “create more jobs” in the near term, but he also warned that the creation of those jobs doesn’t mean certain other jobs will not be lost to automation. “If you become more productive and the company becomes more profitable, usually they hire more people to expand into new areas,” Huang said. 

    “Now, obviously, net generation of jobs doesn’t guarantee that any one human doesn’t get fired. That’s obviously true. It’s more likely that someone will lose a job to someone else, some other human that uses an AI,” he added. 

    He advised people to “learn how to use AI” as he argued that “jobs will change.” 

    As to Nvidia itself, Huang explained, the company — in a reflection of the products it sells — is structured like a “computing stack.” 

    He said “Nvidia’s not built like a military” with a top-down command and control system. Instead, Huang said, the company is organized like a “neural network” with a decentralized structure, reflecting a belief that “your organization should be the architecture of the machinery of building the product.”

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  • Solar Stocks Plunge After Demand Warning in Europe

    Solar Stocks Plunge After Demand Warning in Europe

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    Solar power stocks fell hard in after-hours trading on Thursday following a warning External link from solar-equipment maker SolarEdge Technologies that demand in Europe has slumped significantly.

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  • ASML Holding Sees Flat 2024 Revenue on Demand Uncertainty

    ASML Holding Sees Flat 2024 Revenue on Demand Uncertainty

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    ASML Holding said it expects revenue next year to be similar to 2023 given uncertainty around demand recovery in the semiconductor industry but posted better-than-expected net income for the third quarter.

    Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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  • AI stole the show this year, but earnings will drag Wall Street back to reality

    AI stole the show this year, but earnings will drag Wall Street back to reality

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    Nearly a year ago, OpenAI released ChatGPT 3 into the world, and investors got visions of dollar signs in their heads as they imagined the ways that artificial intelligence could make big money for businesses.

    Wall Street’s now coming to terms with the fact that those sorts of paydays are going to take time. As investors have already seen from the past two quarters of earnings, AI has only really delivered financial benefits for a select few hardware companies so far — while spurring new costs for many others.

    “The AI boom has already bifurcated into the contenders and pretenders,” said Daniel Newman, chief executive and principal analyst of Futurum Research. And while Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Intel Corp. and Arm Holdings PLC
    ARM,
    +0.38%
    have stirred up interest, Nvidia Corp.
    NVDA,
    -4.68%
    has established itself as far and away the greatest “contender,” with AI driving strong demand for its chips tuned for AI training.

    Nvidia last quarter reported record earnings, including a 141% jump in revenue for its graphics chips used in AI infrastructure building up data centers. Nvidia, which reports near the end of earnings season on Nov. 21, posted record revenue of $13.5 billion last quarter and is expected to easily top that with $16 billion in the most recent quarter, a surge of 170% versus a year ago. Those estimates include $12.3 billion of revenue coming from data-center sales.

    Other chip companies could post gains from AI as well, but to far lesser extents. Candidates include Broadcom Corp.
    AVGO,
    -2.01%
    and system maker Super Micro Computer Inc.
    SMCI,
    +2.35%    ,
    as well as Marvell Technology Inc.
    MRVL,
    -0.91%    ,
    which last quarter told analysts that it expects to end the year at a revenue run rate of about $800 million this year from cloud/data-center chips related to AI.

    “This is well above what we had outlined last quarter. Put this in perspective: This would put us at the run rate we had previously communicated for all of next year,” Marvel Chief Executive Matthew Murphy told analysts.

    Super Micro is also riding the AI wave with its customized data-center servers that are designed to consume less power. But revenue in the September quarter is forecast to rise just 15% from a year ago and drop on a sequential basis, as supply constraints from Nvidia likely hampered Super Micro’s ability to meet all its demand.

    Much as Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
    AMD,
    -1.24%
    and Intel Corp.
    INTC,
    -1.37%
    want to be in the AI conversations with the graphics chips they hope will be used for AI data-center applications, they won’t see much of an impact yet from AI revenue. Plus, those companies are experiencing a slowdown in PC sales that may overshadow any small benefit from AI chips.

    The AI boom in chips is clearly not providing enough of a boost to lift finances for the overall semiconductor sector, which is forecast to see earnings fall 3.3% in the third quarter and post a revenue decline of 0.6%, according to FactSet. The industry is being dragged down in part by Micron Technology Inc.
    MU,
    -0.12%    ,
    which reported a 40% drop in revenue and a whopping fiscal fourth-quarter loss in late September for the quarter ended Aug. 31, which is included in FactSet’s third-quarter data. Even so, the company called a bottom to the memory-chip downturn.

    Read also: Micron’s AI focused chip won’t help financial results anytime soon.

    “Most of the consumer-based tech is still struggling, [including] PCs, laptops and to a certain extent smartphones,” said Daniel Morgan, senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust Co. Wall Street has tempered expectations related to the impact of Apple Inc.’s
    AAPL,
    -0.88%
    iPhone 15 launch on the quarter, as estimates call for an overall 1% drop in September-quarter revenue. Last quarter, Apple executives forecast that both Mac and iPad sales would be down by double-digits and that revenue performance would be similar to its June quarter, when revenue fell 1.3%

    In addition, when asked about AI, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company views AI and machine learning “as core fundamental technologies that are integral to virtually every product that we build.” Those comments, though, can also apply to the bulk of tech companies, where AI is built into software as another layer to improve a product. Internet companies such as Meta Platforms Inc.
    META,
    +0.89%
    and Alphabet Inc.
    GOOG,
    +0.36%

    GOOGL,
    +0.45%
    incorporate AI into their software and algorithms but don’t treat it as a specific, revenue-generating product.

    Other software companies are building AI into their products as separate features or add-ons, but they are still in the early stages of seeing whether or not customers will pay more for them. Take Microsoft Corp.,
    MSFT,
    -0.17%
    which has showed off Copilot, an extra AI feature for customers of Microsoft 365.

    “[Microsoft] can distinguish itself by providing more details around its AI revenue
    ramp since we don’t expect much information from Google, who really doesn’t seem
    to have the monetization plan for Bard and AI-assisted search (SGE) ready to
    articulate yet,” Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes said in a note to clients this week. He also noted that the cost of offering AI products to consumers is steep, and requires lots of investment.

    “There are sophisticated issues to contend with for Microsoft, including balancing the potential for higher revenue from Copilots with the high costs per query and much-needed investment,” Reitzes said. “The balance of AI adoption vs. cost was implied when Microsoft guided to flat operating margins year over year for fiscal 2024.”

    Earlier this year, the Information reported that OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT and recipient of a hefty investment from Microsoft, has costs of up to $700,000 a day, because the massive amounts of computing power needed to run queries. In February, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Plus, for $20 a month, a service that will give subscribers access to its AI during peak times and faster response times.

    Another example is Adobe Inc.
    ADBE,
    +1.70%    ,
    which has a few AI offerings, including a subscription service called Generative Credits, tokens that let customers turn text-based prompts into images. Another is Firefly, a generative AI service for images, and an AI option in Photoshop, currently called Photoshop Beta AI, to help users fill in images and other collaborative tools. Adobe did not provide any forecasts on potential revenue generation during its analyst day earlier this month.

    Toni Sacconaghi, a Bernstein Research analyst, said AI could drive a massive increase in enterprise productivity, and companies could dramatically increase IT spending on servers in order to invest in productivity-enhancing AI. “However, we note that enterprise adoption appears to be in early stages,” he said in a recent note to clients, adding that it was feasible that spending on AI infrastructure could take money away from other IT projects in process. “We do worry that projected AI infrastructure build out may be occurring too quickly, necessitating a digestion period, which could result in a commensurate stock pullback in AI-related names.”

    Overall, the information-technology sector itself is expected to see anemic revenue growth this quarter. The consensus on FactSet forecasts a meager 1.35% revenue uptick in the third quarter, with earnings growth of 4.65%. FactSet’s estimates for IT companies exclude internet companies like Meta and Alphabet, which are under the category of communications/interactive media services. That sector is expected to see sales growth of 12%, and earnings growth of 51%, thanks to a 116% boost in Meta’s net income, after it hit a low point in the year-ago quarter.

    Amazon.com Inc.
    AMZN,
    -0.81%    ,
    in the category of consumer discretionary/broadline retail, is forecast to see earnings growth of 109%, and revenue growth of 11%. Amazon’s cloud services business, AWS, is expected to also see a potential uplift from customers spending money on AI projects, according to a TD Cowen & Co. survey, in which 41% of respondents said they were “highly considering” allocating a budget for generative AI.

    “This trend could bode well for Amazon’s AWS,” TD Cowen analyst John Blackledge said in a recent report, adding that he expects AWS revenue growth to reaccelerate in the second half of this year and in 2024, boosted by the move of additional workloads to the cloud, possibly including generative AI.

    As companies build up their infrastructure, or their spending on cloud computing to add or improve AI capabilities, they are seeing higher costs, which is affecting margins — especially if revenue has slowed down, as it has in some sectors. Across both the broader S&P 500
    SPX,
    and the IT sector, earnings are lower than a year ago.

    As Newman of Futurum pointed out, “AI stole the budget this year.” And that is a mixed bag for tech.

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  • Stocks Are Poised to Rise Monday

    Stocks Are Poised to Rise Monday

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    U.S. stocks are poised to rise on Monday ahead of a week of earnings and economic data releases, including quarterly reports from Tesla, Netflix, and .

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  • Israeli exec who hired Palestinians in tech boom still hopes for peace while mourning slain daughter

    Israeli exec who hired Palestinians in tech boom still hopes for peace while mourning slain daughter

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    When Eyal Waldman thinks of his youngest daughter and her boyfriend, he sees them dancing.

    “Danielle and Noam loved dancing, and I hope they continue dancing somewhere up there,” Eyal Waldman told MarketWatch.

    Danielle Waldman and Noam Shay were killed at a music festival in southern Israel last week, part of a campaign by the Hamas terrorist group that has led to further bloodshed.

    Danielle’s father — an Israeli tech executive who co-founded Mellanox, which became the largest acquisition in Nvidia Corp.’s
    NVDA,
    -3.16%
    history — spoke with MarketWatch as Friday turned to Saturday in Israel, in hopes of increasing attention on the hostages who are still held in Gaza as well as to memorialize his daughter, who was 24, and Shay, who was 26.

    “They loved to celebrate life,” Eyal Waldman said of his daughter and her boyfriend, before adding “they went down on Friday night to celebrate life, love and freedom, and they were massacred.”


    Courtesy of Eyal Waldman

    Danielle Waldman — who was born in Palo Alto, California, but moved back to Israel with her family at age 4 — and Israeli native Shay were students who met six years ago in the army, and her father said they had been inseparable since. They attended the Supernova music festival in early October with friends, and were killed while attempting to escape Hamas terrorists in a car that Eyal Waldman found bullet-riddled near the festival’s location.

    “Danielle and Noam have done nothing bad to anyone, and they were murdered only because they were Israelis,” he said.

    Eyal Waldman, a onetime Israeli combat fighter, founded Mellanox in 1999, and sold it 20 years later to Nvidia for $6.9 billion. He is known internationally for attempting to foster peace between Israelis and Palestinians through his work in technology — Mellanox hired Palestinian tech workers in Gaza, Nablus and the West Bank town of Rawabi, which led to a “60 Minutes” appearance.

    “We wanted to make peace, to work together, to bring prosperity to the Palestinian people, the same as we have in Israel,” he said. “I brought even Apple
    AAPL,
    -1.03%
    to open a design center in Rawabi and I brought other companies to open design centers in Rawabi.”

    The death of his daughter and Shay and the scope of the attacks and counter-attacks dominating headlines in recent days have not changed Waldman’s hope for peace in the future, he said, but not the near future. He believes this time, the violence “took us back several years, if not decades.”

    “We need time to build the trust, if at all, between the two nations and start working together to be able to talk about peace,” he said. “Until then, we will continue protecting ourselves in a very direct manner in Gaza and everywhere else around Israel.”

    Waldman also said he would continue to try to hire Palestinians and work with them to be a part of the Israeli tech ecosystem, as long as they state “that they are working for peace, and they are not supporting — not financially and not in any other way — any terror actions, or any actions that are not civilian economics between the two nations.”

    “Our hands are always reaching out for peace. But at the same time, before we do this, we need people to understand that Israel is strong, Israel is united, and we will never let anyone harm the citizens of the state of Israel again.”

    Read: Israel-Gaza war scenarios: Here’s what might lift oil prices to $95, $100 and $115 a barrel

    Waldman was thankful for U.S. aid and was forceful in discussing the need to find hostages that were still missing. One of Nvidia’s current employees was kidnapped, according to an email that Chief Executive Jensen Huang sent to employees that was obtained by Insider, which reported that the employee was also at the Supernova music festival.

    Nvidia has more than 3,000 employees in Israel mostly working for Mellanox, which makes networking gear that connects Nvidia’s high-performance data-center products. In an emailed statement, an Nvidia spokesman said “our focus now is working with our Israel leadership to ensure our employees and their families are safe and well cared for. We will then turn our focus to shoring up [the company’s] execution if necessary to ensure continued operations of our business.”

    Waldman said the return of hostages is top of mind.

    “What’s important now is to focus on bringing back the hostages, and that is the No. 1 priority for the State of Israel and for the international community,” he said.

    Continuing to worry about others while suffering his own tragedy is a trait that Eyal Waldman seems to have passed down to his youngest daughter. He said that he had received a note from another festival attendee who was wounded in the eye in the initial attack. That victim told him that Danielle Waldman had stopped to attend to her and make sure she was safe before attempting to escape in a car that was later believed to have been attacked by Hamas terrorists with rifles.

    “They loved to celebrate life,” Waldman said of his daughter and her boyfriend.

    “And they went down on Friday night to celebrate life, love and freedom, and they were massacred.”

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