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  • Intel’s stock sees worst plunge since 2020: ‘Yet another major reset’

    Intel’s stock sees worst plunge since 2020: ‘Yet another major reset’


    As Intel Corp.’s stock plunged to its biggest one-day drop in about three and a half years, analysts had some harsh words for the chip maker.

    “How many times can you push the reset button?” Bernstein’s Stacy Rasgon asked in a note to clients.

    While he thought many investors were bracing for the company to miss on its first-quarter forecast, the outlook came in “extremely weak and clearly worse than feared.” Intel
    INTC,
    -11.91%
    expects $12.7 billion in revenue at the midpoint, while analysts had been looking for $14.3 billion.

    See more: Intel seen struggling to ‘find its footing’ as guidance miss sends stock tanking

    “After yet another major reset this story probably just shifted to 2026 at the earliest for the bulls, and there is a lot of meat for the bears to sink their teeth into in the meantime,” Rasgon wrote, while sticking with his market-perform rating and $42 target price.

    Baird’s Tristan Gerra highlighted challenges for Intel’s data-center and artificial-intelligence unit, which is “on track for a third consecutive year of revenue declines,” while his own revenue forecast implies a 14-year low.

    Gaudi, the company’s accelerator chip for artificial-intelligence applications, “does not seem enough to lift [data-center] revenue, while gross margin will be impacted by higher depreciation inclusive of an expected U.S. Chip Act credit,” Gerra continued.

    He also expressed some concerns about the company’s broader road ahead.

    “Can top-line growth in future years be sufficient to fund continued node migration?” Gerra said. “Many hurdles remain, notably ramping units from this year’s small base (small baseline for Intel 4 makes it more challenging to yield at the next node), while [the Intel Foundry Service] revenue ramp entirely depends on future node execution including yield and performance.”

    Gerra has a neutral rating and $40 target price on Intel’s stock.

    Shares fell 11.9% in Friday trading, making for their worst single-day percentage decline since July 24, 2020, when they fell 16.2%, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

    Needham’s N. Quinn Bolton, meanwhile, downgraded the stock to hold from buy in the wake of Thursday afternoon’s report, calling the earnings reset “unexpected.”

    “In addition to an overall worsening risk-reward, Intel’s core [data-center] business is challenged by a shift to accelerated computing architectures and direct competition from AMD and ARM,” he wrote. “We expect AI to remain the spending priority in the data center for the next several quarters. To that end, dollars will continue moving away from Intel’s core competency.”

    Read: Missed the boat on AMD’s stock surge? Why this analyst says you’re not too late.

    Rosenblatt’s Hans Mosesmann took a similar view as he argued that Intel’s sales outlook is “contrary to the uber bullish messaging to the Street and is consistent with share losses to AMD, a lack of any perceivable AI growth vector that moves any dial, and points to another, yes another, transitional year.”

    Artificial intelligence “seems like everywhere except at Intel,” he continued, noting that his stance on the stock “has not changed for many years.” Mosesmann continues to rate it at sell.

    Opinion: Intel’s stock plunge shows that Wall Street still hasn’t learned its lesson on AI hype

    Raymond James analyst Srini Pajjuri, however, was more upbeat about Intel’s ability to capitalize on AI. “While Intel won’t likely get much credit for AI in the near term, we are encouraged by the growing pipeline for Gaudi accelerators ($2b+) and expect meaningful revenue contribution” in the second half of 2024, he wrote, while sticking with his outperform call but cutting his target price to $52 from $54.



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  • These 20 stocks soared the most in 2023

    These 20 stocks soared the most in 2023

    (Updated with Friday’s closing prices.)

    The 2023 rally for stocks in the U.S. accelerated as more investors bought the idea that the Federal Reserve succeeded in its effort to bring inflation to heel.

    The S&P 500
    SPX
    ended Friday with a 24.2% gain for 2023, following a 19.4% decline in 2022. (All price changes in this article exclude dividends). Among the 500 stocks, 65% were up for 2023. Below is a list of the year’s 20 best performers in the benchmark index.

    This article focuses on large-cap stocks. MarketWatch Editor in Chief Mark DeCambre took a broader look at all U.S. stocks of companies with market capitalizations of at least $1 billion, to list 10 with gains ranging from 412% to 1,924%.

    The Fed began raising short-term interest rates and pushing long-term rates higher in March 2022 by allowing its bond portfolio to run off. That explains the poor performance for stocks in 2022, as bonds and even bank accounts because more attractive to investors.

    The central bank hasn’t raised the federal-funds rate since moving it to the current target range of 5.25% to 5.50% in July, and its economic projections point to three rate cuts in 2024.

    Investors are anticipating the return to a low-rate environment by scooping up 10-year U.S. Treasury notes
    BX:TMUBMUSD10Y,
    whose yield ended the year at 3.88%, down from 4.84% on Oct. 27 — the day of the S&P 500’s low for the second half of 2023.

    Read: Treasury yields end mostly higher but little changed on year after wild 2023

    Before looking at the list of best-performing stocks of 2023, here’s a summary of how the 11 sectors of the S&P 500 performed, with the full index and three more broad indexes at the bottom:

    Sector or index

    		 2023 price change

    		 2022 price change

    		 Price change since end of 2021

    		 Forward P/E

    		 Forward P/E at end of 2022

    		 Forward P/E at end of 2023
    Information Technology

    		 56.4%

    		 -28.9%

    		 11.5%

    		 26.7

    		 20.0

    		 28.2
    Communication Services

    		 54.4%

    		 -40.4%

    		 -7.6%

    		 17.4

    		 14.3

    		 21.0
    Consumer Discretionary

    		 41.0%

    		 -37.6%

    		 -11.4%

    		 26.2

    		 21.7

    		 34.7
    Industrials

    		 16.0%

    		 -7.1%

    		 8.0%

    		 20.0

    		 18.7

    		 22.0
    Materials

    		 10.2%

    		 -14.1%

    		 -4.9%

    		 19.5

    		 15.8

    		 16.6
    Financials

    		 9.9%

    		 -12.4%

    		 -3.4%

    		 14.6

    		 13.0

    		 16.3
    Real Estate

    		 8.3%

    		 -28.4%

    		 -21.6%

    		 18.3

    		 16.9

    		 24.7
    Healthcare

    		 0.3%

    		 -3.6%

    		 -3.3%

    		 18.2

    		 17.7

    		 17.3
    Consumer Staples

    		 -2.2%

    		 -3.2%

    		 -5.4%

    		 19.3

    		 20.6

    		 21.4
    Energy

    		 -4.8%

    		 59.0%

    		 51.8%

    		 10.9

    		 9.8

    		 11.1
    Utilities

    		 -10.2%

    		 -1.4%

    		 -11.4%

    		 15.9

    		 18.7

    		 20.4
    S&P 500
    SPX     		24.2%

    		 -19.4%

    		 0.4%

    		 19.7

    		 16.8

    		 21.6
    Dow Jones Industrial Average
    DJIA     		13.7%

    		 -8.8%

    		 3.8%

    		 17.6

    		 16.6

    		 18.9
    Nasdaq Composite
    COMP     		43.4%

    		 -33.1%

    		 -3.5%

    		 26.9

    		 22.6

    		 32.0
    Nasdaq-100
    NDX     		53.8%

    		 -33.0%

    		 3.5%

    		 26.3

    		 20.9

    		 30.3
    Source: FactSet

    A look at 2023 price action really needs to encompass what took place in 2022 for context. The broad indexes haven’t moved much from their levels at the end of 2022 (again, excluding dividends). We have included current forward price-to-earnings ratios along with those at the end of 2021 and 2022. These valuations have declined a bit, which may provide some comfort for investors wondering how likely it is for stocks to continue to rally in 2024.

    Biggest price increases among the S&P 500

    Here are the 20 stocks in the S&P 500 whose prices rose the most in 2023:

    Company

    		 Ticker

    		 2023 price change

    		 2022 price change

    		 Price change since end of 2021

    		 Forward P/E

    		 Forward P/E at end of 2022

    		 Forward P/E at end of 2021
    Nvidia Corp.

    		 NVDA,
         		239%

    		 -50%

    		 68%

    		 24.9

    		 34.4

    		 58.0
    Meta Platforms Inc. Class A

    		 META,
    -1.22%         		194%

    		 -64%

    		 5%

    		 20.2

    		 14.7

    		 23.5
    Royal Caribbean Group

    		 RCL,
    -0.37%         		162%

    		 -36%

    		 68%

    		 14.3

    		 14.9

    		 232.4
    Builders FirstSource Inc.

    		 BLDR,
    -1.02%         		157%

    		 -24%

    		 95%

    		 14.2

    		 10.7

    		 13.3
    Uber Technologies Inc.

    		 UBER,
    -2.49%         		149%

    		 -41%

    		 47%

    		 56.9

    		 N/A

    		 N/A
    Carnival Corp.

    		 CCL,
    -0.70%         		130%

    		 -60%

    		 -8%

    		 18.7

    		 41.3

    		 N/A
    Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

    		 AMD,
    -0.91%         		128%

    		 -55%

    		 2%

    		 39.7

    		 17.7

    		 43.1
    PulteGroup Inc.

    		 PHM,
    -0.26%         		127%

    		 -20%

    		 81%

    		 9.1

    		 6.3

    		 6.2
    Palo Alto Networks Inc.

    		 PANW,
    -0.24%         		111%

    		 -25%

    		 59%

    		 50.2

    		 38.0

    		 70.1
    Tesla Inc.

    		 TSLA,
    -1.86%         		102%

    		 -65%

    		 -29%

    		 66.2

    		 22.3

    		 120.3
    Broadcom Inc.

    		 AVGO,
    -0.55%         		100%

    		 -16%

    		 68%

    		 23.2

    		 13.6

    		 19.8
    Salesforce Inc.

    		 CRM,
    -0.92%         		98%

    		 -48%

    		 4%

    		 28.0

    		 23.8

    		 53.5
    Fair Isaac Corp.

    		 FICO,
    -0.46%         		94%

    		 38%

    		 168%

    		 47.1

    		 29.3

    		 28.7
    Arista Networks Inc.

    		 ANET,
    -0.62%         		94%

    		 -16%

    		 64%

    		 32.7

    		 22.3

    		 41.4
    Intel Corp.

    		 INTC,
    -0.28%         		90%

    		 -49%

    		 -2%

    		 26.6

    		 14.6

    		 13.9
    Jabil Inc.

    		 JBL,
    -0.45%         		87%

    		 -3%

    		 81%

    		 13.5

    		 7.9

    		 10.3
    Lam Research Corp.

    		 LRCX,
    -0.81%         		86%

    		 -42%

    		 9%

    		 25.2

    		 13.5

    		 20.2
    ServiceNow Inc.

    		 NOW,
    +0.57%         		82%

    		 -40%

    		 9%

    		 56.0

    		 42.6

    		 90.1
    Amazon.com Inc.

    		 AMZN,
    -0.94%         		81%

    		 -50%

    		 -9%

    		 42.0

    		 46.7

    		 64.9
    Monolithic Power Systems Inc.

    		 MPWR,
    -0.23%         		78%

    		 -28%

    		 28%

    		 49.1

    		 27.3

    		 57.9
    Source: FactSet

    Click on the tickers for more about each company.

    Click here for Tomi Kilgore’s detailed guide to the wealth of information available for free on the MarketWatch quote page.

    Don’t miss: Nvidia tops list of Wall Street’s 20 favorite stocks for 2024

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  • Intel Rallied 91% This Year. Expect Higher Highs in 2024.

    Intel Rallied 91% This Year. Expect Higher Highs in 2024.

    What a strange year 2023 was for Intel. 

    Continue reading this article with a Barron’s subscription.

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  • Intel, Tesla, Apple, Iovance, NetEase, Coherus BioSciences, and More Stock Market Movers

    Intel, Tesla, Apple, Iovance, NetEase, Coherus BioSciences, and More Stock Market Movers

    Updated Dec 27, 2023, 7:34 am EST / Original Dec 27, 2023, 4:26 am EST

    Stock futures traded slightly lower Wednesday after the S&P 500 finished higher Tuesday and just 0.45% below its record close of 4,796.56 hit Jan. 3, 2022. The broad market index has risen 24% this year and has gained 4.5% this month as traders bet the Federal Reserve will begin cutting interest rates as soon as March.

    Continue reading this article with a Barron’s subscription.

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  • Dow lands second-highest close ever as stocks build on eight-week winning streak

    Dow lands second-highest close ever as stocks build on eight-week winning streak

    U.S. stocks closed higher Tuesday, building on a streak of eight straight weekly gains as the final, holiday-shortened week of 2023 got under way.

    What happened

    On Friday, stocks finished a choppy pre-holiday trading session mostly higher, with the S&P 500, Dow and Nasdaq each scoring an eighth straight weekly gain. The S&P 500 finished 0.9% away from its record close of 4,796.56, set on Jan. 3, 2022.

    Read:…

    Master your money.

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  • Synopsys and Ansys in talks to merge: report

    Synopsys and Ansys in talks to merge: report

    Shares of Ansys Inc. soared 18% in trading Friday on reports the company is in discussions to be acquired by Synopsys Inc. in a deal that would create a design-software behemoth.

    The potential deal would kick off 2024 with a mega-merger, even as the Federal Trade Commission attempts to crack down on such transactions. Talks remain fluid and a third party might still emerge as a possible suitor of Ansys, according to a Wall Street Journal report, which cited people familiar with the situation.

    Ansys
    ANSS,
    +18.08%    ,
    which has a market value of nearly $26.3 billion, makes software that helps predict how products in aerospace, healthcare and automotive applications will work in the real world. A deal could be struck early in 2024, according to people familiar with the matter. Ansys reported revenue of $2.1 billion in 2022.

    Synopsys
    SNPS,
    -6.34%    ,
    with a market value of $85.1 billion, makes software that engineers use to design and test silicon chips used in smartphones, self-driving cars and other forms of artificial intelligence. Its stock has climbed 65% this year as investors have hopped on the AI bandwagon boom. Shares of Synopsys dipped 6% in late trading Friday.

    Synopsys’s customers include Nvidia Corp.
    NVDA,
    -0.33%    ,
    Intel Corp.
    INTC,
    +1.95%
    and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
    AMD,
    -0.22%    .

    Representatives from Synopsys and Ansys were not immediately available for comment.

    Should the companies strike a merger, it would offer a fresh test for the FTC and its chair, Lina Khan, who have opposed large tech mergers and acquisitions. The agency unsuccessfully sued Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc.
    META,
    -0.20%
    in its pursuit of VR developer Within, as well as Microsoft Corp.’s
    MSFT,
    +0.28%
    $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard Inc.

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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

    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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  • 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

    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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  • 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

    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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  • Intel’s Big Chip-Making Push in Germany Hits Bottleneck

    Intel’s Big Chip-Making Push in Germany Hits Bottleneck

    Intel’s Big Chip-Making Push in Germany Hits Bottleneck

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  • Instacart, Ford, Pinterest, Coty, Dollar General, Intel, and More Stock Market Movers

    Instacart, Ford, Pinterest, Coty, Dollar General, Intel, and More Stock Market Movers

    This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers visit http://www.djreprints.com.

    https://www.barrons.com/articles/stock-market-movers-457cee3b

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  • Intel Shares Slip as CFO Warns of Excess Data Center Chip Inventories

    Intel Shares Slip as CFO Warns of Excess Data Center Chip Inventories

    Intel Stock Slips as CFO Warns of Excess Data Center Chip Inventories

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  • Arm Sets IPO Price at $51 a Share. The Stock Is Set to Open Higher.

    Arm Sets IPO Price at $51 a Share. The Stock Is Set to Open Higher.

    Arm is set to start trading today on the Nasdaq under the symbol ARM.


    Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg



    Arm Holdings


    priced its initial public offering at $51 a share. That’s at the top of the expected range of $47 to $51, giving the chip design company a valuation of $54.5 billion on a f…

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  • Arm prices IPO at high end of range, raising $4.87 billion

    Arm prices IPO at high end of range, raising $4.87 billion

    Arm Holding Ltd. priced its initial public offering at the high end of its expected range late Wednesday following intense interest.

    The British chip-design company priced shares at $51, raising $4.87 billion, following earlier reports that Arm would be pricing its IPO at $52 a share. A source close to the deal confirmed to MarketWatch that $52 had been the expected price, but that it was reduced to $51. That puts the chip designer at just over a $52 billion valuation. Recently, Arm had stated a targeted range of $47 to $51.

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  • Chip designer Arm files for long-awaited IPO, as smaller transistors send costs skyrocketing

    Chip designer Arm files for long-awaited IPO, as smaller transistors send costs skyrocketing

    Arm Holdings Ltd. filed its long-awaited initial public offering late Monday, following last year’s failed bid by Nvidia Corp. to acquire the U.K.-based chip architecture company.

    Arm has reportedly been seeking to raise $8 billion to $10 billion at a valuation of $60 billion to $70 billion, making its IPO the biggest of the year so far, and a number of large tech companies, including Amazon.com Inc.
    AMZN,
    +1.10%    ,
     Intel Corp.
    INTC,
    +1.19%
     and Nvidia
    NVDA,
    +8.47%    ,
     are reportedly in the mix to be anchor investors. 

    In a late Monday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Arm said it was offering to list its U.S. traded shares on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “ARM.”

    Arm, which is owned by Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp.
    9984,
    +1.16%    ,
    was the target of an unsuccessful $40 billion acquisition by Nvidia last year. After Nvidia scrubbed the deal and paid a $1.36 billion breakup charge following the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s unanimous decision to block it, Nvidia disclosed it paid Arm $750 million for a 20-year license to its technology.

    At the time of the breakup, chips sales had hit record highs in 2021, surging 26.2% to a record $555.9 billion, fueled by pandemic-triggered shortages. But the chip industry has since swung to a glut.

    Arm listed Barclays, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Mizuho, BofA Securities, Citigroup, and Deutsche Bank Securities among the IPO’s underwriters.

    Recent reports said SoftBank was in discussions to purchase the 25% stake in Arm that it does not outright own, which is held by its Vision Fund 1, ahead of the IPO.

    Read from Feb. 2022: Wall Street’s reaction to death of Nvidia-Arm deal: No duh

    Arm reported net income of $524 million, or 51 cents a share, on revenue of $2.68 billion for fiscal 2023, which ended March 31, compared with net income of $549 million, or 54 cents a share, on revenue of $2.7 billion, in fiscal 2022, and $388 million, or 38 cents a share, on revenue of $2.03 billion in fiscal 2021.

    Arm uses an architecture that is different from the once-standard x86 one built by Intel in the early days of computing. 

    The company said it has shipped more than 250 billion Arm-based chips since its started in 1990 as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple
    AAPL,
    +0.77%
    and VLSI Technology. In fiscal 2023, Arm said it shipped 30.6 billion chips.

    The company said it is going public as the “resources required to develop leading-edge products are significant and continue to increase exponentially as manufacturing process nodes shrink.” Transistors are expressed in scales of nanometers, with design costs running about $249 million for a 7-nanometer chip and about $725 million for a 2-nm chip.

    “As the world moves increasingly towards AI- and [machine language]-enabled computing, Arm will be central to this transition,” the company said in the filing. “Arm CPUs already run AI and ML workloads in billions of devices, including smartphones, cameras, digital TVs, cars and cloud data centers.”

    Arm said it is working with Alphabet Inc.
    GOOG,
    +0.64%

    GOOGL,
    +0.71%    ,
    GM’s
    GM,
    +0.45%
    Cruise, Mercedes-Benz
    MBG,
    +0.78%    ,
    Meta Platforms Inc.
    META,
    +2.35%    ,
    and Nvidia “to deploy Arm technology to run AI workloads.”

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  • SoftBank looking to buy remaining 25% stake in Arm from its Vision Fund: report

    SoftBank looking to buy remaining 25% stake in Arm from its Vision Fund: report

    SoftBank Group Corp. is reportedly in discussions to purchase the 25% stake in chip designer Arm Ltd. that is held by its Vision Fund 1, ahead of a highly anticipated IPO.

    Reuters reported Sunday that Japan’s SoftBank
    9984,
    +0.37%
    — which owns 75% of Arm — is negotiating a deal with VF1, the $100 billion investment fund it created in 2017, and noted that a deal could give VF1 investors a big boost after years of meager returns. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Co. are among VF1’s largest investors.

    SoftBank is planning to launch a long-awaited initial public offering for British chip designer Arm as soon as September. That will likely be the biggest IPO of the year on Wall Street, aiming to raise $8 billion to $10 billion at a valuation around $60 billion to $70 billion.

    A number of large tech companies, including Amazon.com Inc.
    AMZN,
    -0.11%    ,
    Intel Corp.
    INTC,
    +0.61%
    and Nvidia Inc.
    NVDA,
    -3.62%    ,
    are reportedly in the mix to be anchor investors in Arm’s IPO.

    Last week, SoftBank reported its tech-heavy Vision Funds turned a quarterly profit for the first time in 18 months

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  • Intel stock rallies after earnings show AI data-center beat, strong PC sales

    Intel stock rallies after earnings show AI data-center beat, strong PC sales

    Intel Corp. shares surged in the extended session Thursday after the chip maker posted a surprise profit, but while data-center sales came in better than expected, a larger beat in PC product sales drove margin improvement.

    Intel
    INTC,
    +0.55%
    shares surged around 8% after hours, following a 0.6% rise to close the regular session at $34.55.

    The company reported second-quarter net income of $1.48 billion, or 35 cents a share, versus a loss of $454 million, or 11 cents a share, in the year-ago period. After adjusting for restructuring charges and other items, Intel reported 13 cents a share, versus net income of 28 cents a share a year ago.

    Revenue fell to $12.95 billion from $15.32 billion in the year-ago period, and adjusted gross margins came in at 39.8%, the company said.

    Intel had forecast an adjusted second-quarter loss of 4 cents a share on revenue of about $11.5 billion to $12.5 billion for the current period, and adjusted gross margins of about 33.2% for the quarter.

    Analysts surveyed by FactSet, on average, expected a loss of 4 cents a share on revenue of $12.12 billion.

    The margin beat was “largely a function of revenue,” Intel Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner told analysts on a conference call, and that revenue beat was much more pronounced in Intel client, or PC, business than it was data center.

    “We had obviously beat revenue significantly, and we’ve got a good follow-through in the fixed-cost nature of our business, and so that really was what helped us outperform significantly on the gross-margin side in the second quarter,” Zinsner told analysts.

    Intel posted PC-group sales of $6.8 billion and data-center sales of $4 billion, while analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast $6.08 billion and $3.8 billion, respectively.

    Before the conference call, Edward Jones analyst Logan Purk told MarketWatch in an interview following the report that most of the improvement in Intel’s gross margin came from the unexpected amount of growth in the PC business.

    “The magnitude of client computing growth, and how the PC market is recovering faster than anticipated,” came as a surprise, Purk told MarketWatch. The analyst, who has a hold rating on Intel, said he expects sequential single-digit improvement in data center going forward.

    Still, on the call, Intel Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger hammered home the point that Intel was wholeheartedly going after the AI market, which is expected to be dominated by Nvidia Corp.
    NVDA,
    +0.99%    ,
    and to a lesser extent, by Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
    AMD,
    +0.92%    ,
    which reports earnings on Tuesday.

    “We see AI being infused in everything and there’s going to be AI chips for the edge, AI chips for the communications infrastructure, AI chips for sensing devices, for automotive devices, and we see opportunities for us both as a product provider and as a foundry and technology provider across that spectrum,” Gelsinger said.

    Meanwhile, network and edge sales came in at $1.4 billion, while analysts called for $1.48 billion, and foundry services revenue rose to $232 million for the quarter, while Wall Street looked for $149.2 million.

    “In the third quarter, we do obviously at the midpoint see revenue growth sequentially and so that will be helpful in terms of gross margin,” Zinsner told analysts on the call. “We expect, again, pretty good follow-through as we get that incremental revenue.”

    Intel forecast third-quarter earnings of about 20 cents a share on revenue of about $12.9 billion to $13.9 billion and adjusted gross margins of about 43% for the current quarter. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast third-quarter adjusted earnings of 16 cents a share on revenue of $13.22 billion.

    Read: Intel may have bottomed, but earnings will show if chip maker can hope to catch up to Nvidia and AMD in AI

    Year to date, Intel shares have gained nearly 31%, while the PHLX Semiconductor Index 
    SOX,
    +1.86%
    has surged 49%, the S&P 500
    SPX,
    -0.64%
    has grown 18%, the Nasdaq Composite
    COMP,
    -0.55%
    has gained 34% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average
    DJIA,
    -0.67%
    is up more than 6%.

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  • Nvidia Stock Is Down. Blame Tesla.

    Nvidia Stock Is Down. Blame Tesla.

    This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers visit http://www.djreprints.com.

    https://www.barrons.com/articles/nvidia-stock-price-ai-tesla-5af5041c

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    Shares of newly minted $1 trillion company


    Nvidia


    were taking it on the chin Monday, and investors searching for a reason should look to


    Tesla

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  • Option demand explodes in June as investors use bullish bets to chase stock-market rally

    Option demand explodes in June as investors use bullish bets to chase stock-market rally

    Trading in U.S. stock option contracts has surged in 2023 as retail and institutional traders have harnessed bullish call options to chase a runaway rally in U.S. stocks, market analysts told MarketWatch.

    As of Friday, 46 million option contracts linked to U.S. equity indexes, individual stocks and exchange-traded funds have traded hands every trading session on average this month, according to an analysis by Callie Cox, a U.S. equity strategist at eToro.

    This means that, barring a sudden drop-off in trading activity, June is on track to be the busiest month for option traders ever, Cox said. That is particularly notable given that the summer months are typically more placid on Wall Street.

    “It’s pretty incredible for a summer month. It shows how engaged investors are after such a strong rally,” said Callie Cox, a U.S. equity strategist at eToro, during an interview with MarketWatch.


    ETORO

    Much of the demand has centered on call options: trading volume in these contracts has averaged 26 million a day so far, leaving June on track for the heaviest month of call buying since November 2021, Cox said.

    Several overlapping trends have contributed to the surge in option demand, market analysts said.

    Investors wary about a rally that recently carried the S&P 500 index to its highest level in 14 months have opted to buy short-dated calls. Often these are contracts tied to the S&P 500 or the index-tracking SPDR S&P 500 exchange-traded fund with less than 24 hours left until expiration, a class of options referred to as “0DTEs” for “zero days to expiration.”

    Some traders see these cheap short-term bets as a particularly affordable, if risky, strategy for reaping gains as the market marches higher, according to market analysts and portfolio managers who spoke with MarketWatch.

    And when stocks pull back, investors often change their strategy and instead of buying calls, opt to take advantage by buying or selling put options.

    While a call represents a bet that a given index, stock or currency will rise, a put represents the opposite.

    In addition to betting on calls tied to popular equity indexes and exchange-traded funds like the S&P 500 or the Invesco QQQ Trust Series 1 ETF
    QQQ,
    -0.99%    ,
    investors are also scooping up bullish options tied to Nvidia Corp. and other market leaders, hoping to maximize any returns from the artificial intelligence boom.

    The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that trading in call options tied to shares of Nvidia Corp.
    NVDA,
    -1.90%
    and two other chip stocks, Advanced Micro Devices
    AMD,
    -0.62%
    and Intel Corp.,
    INTC,
    +0.89%
    has surged fivefold since the beginning of the year, citing data from Cboe Global Markets, owner of the world’s largest options exchange.

    But demand for calls has expanded beyond megacap technology names into areas of the market that have trailed since the start of the year, including small-cap stocks and others, which have rallied in June.

    The Russell 2000
    RUT,
    -1.44%    ,
    an index that tracks small-cap stocks traded in the U.S., is up nearly 5% year-to-date. As of the end of May, it was marginally negative for the year, options experts said.

    “With mega cap technology leading the indexes higher, investors started to play catch-up by trying to buy the second-tier and heavily shorted companies,” said Alon Rosin, head of equity derivatives at Oppenheimer, in emailed commentary shared with MarketWatch.

    This means that investors’ rush to try to keep up with the market hasn’t only benefited hot AI-stocks.

    Amy Wu Silverman, head of derivatives strategy at RBC Capital Markets, made a similar observation in a recent note to clients where she pointed out that call buying has surged for both companies expected to benefit from the AI boom, as well as stocks in an RBC basket of companies that are threatened by it — stocks like Robert Half International
    RHI,
    -0.54%    ,
    Chegg Inc.
    CHGG,
    -4.00%
    and Yext Inc.
    YEXT,
    -2.74%    ,
    she said.

    Silverman said heavy call buying in this group is indicative of the market’s “extreme call exuberance.”

    Call buying has helped send popular indicators of positioning like the put-call ratio and skew, which measures the cost of downside protection via puts vs. demand for upside exposure via calls, to their lowest levels of the year earlier this month.

    “People are reaching for upside via calls, and you’re seeing skew falling due to the fact that everybody has been buying calls,” said Mark Callahan, head of trading and a portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors, during a phone interview with MarketWatch.

    Callahan manages several active exchange-traded funds that require heavy option trading.

    U.S. stocks have marched higher this year, with the S&P 500 rising for five straight weeks through June 16, its longest streak of weekly gains since November 2021. The Nasdaq Composite
    COMP,
    -1.01%
    has seen even stronger performance, and its eight-week win streak has been heralded as the tech-heavy index’s longest rally since 2019, according to FactSet data.

    The S&P 500 has risen more than 13% so far this year, while the Nasdaq has gained more than 30%. Both have erased much of their losses from 2022, which was the worst year for stocks since 2008. Last week, both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq hit their highest levels since April 2022.

    However, there are some signs that the torrid rally might be in the midst of a pullback as the S&P 500, Nasdaq and Dow Jones Industrial Average
    DJIA,
    -0.65%
    are all on track to finish the week lower on Friday.

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  • Tesla, Nvidia, Spirit Aerosystems, KB Home, Accenture, and More Market Movers

    Tesla, Nvidia, Spirit Aerosystems, KB Home, Accenture, and More Market Movers

    Stock futures were falling following three straight days of losses for Wall Street. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell again will be delivering testimony before Congress. His comments on Wednesday that the central bank likely would be raising rates further this year pushed markets lower.

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