, /PRNewswire/ -- ClaimsFiler, a FREE shareholder information service, reminds investors that they have untilAugust 25, 2026 to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities class action lawsuit against Futu Holdings Limited (NasdaqGM: FUTU) ("Futu" or the "Company"), if they purchased or otherwise acquired the Company's securities between May 24, 2023 and May 27, 2026, inclusive (the "Class Period"). This action is pending in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
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Futu investors should visit us at https://www.claimsfiler.com/cases/nasdaqgm-futu or call toll-free (833) 538-3604. Lawyers at Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC are available to discuss your legal options.
About the Lawsuit
Futu and certain of its executives are charged with failing to disclose material information during the Class Period, violating federal securities laws.
The alleged false and misleading statements and omissions include, but are not limited to, that: (i) the Company was not in compliance with the requirements of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, including because it continued to conduct securities business, public fund sales business and futures business in mainland China without obtaining the requisite licenses or approval; (ii) as a result, the Company was reasonably likely to face regulatory penalties, including the disgorgement of ill-gotten gains and other penalties; (iii) as a result of the foregoing, the Company's financial results were overstated; and (iv) as a result of the foregoing, defendants' positive statements about the Company's business, operations, and prospects were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis.
The case is Tang v. Futu Holdings Limited, et al, No. 26-cv-05453.
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Fed communication critical without rate move BOJ inflation outlook faces fresh test Hormuz risks compound yen headwinds AI hyperscaler weakness lifts carry trade unwind risk 165 looms overhead after textbook breakout The bullish breakout flagged in last week's outlook played out exactly as anticipated, sending USD/JPY to fresh multi-decade highs. Whether the rally can extend further will likely be determined by a packed week headlined by policy decisions from the Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan, alongside key inflation, growth and labour market data from both economies.
The Fed's Communication Challenge The Federal Reserve's interest rate decision on Wednesday looms as the most important event for USD/JPY this week. Overnight index swaps imply around a one-in-three chance of a 25bp rate hike, as shown in the graphic below.
Unlike previous meetings, there will be no Summary of Economic Projections or dot plot, leaving only the policy statement and Kevin Warsh's press conference to provide insight into the FOMC's thinking. If the statement is as brief as it was in June, ending simply with "The Committee will deliver price stability", it would only add to the confusion surrounding its reaction function.
That makes Warsh's press conference the most important communication event. But those expecting him to provide concrete guidance may be disappointed. Warsh has repeatedly said he does not provide forward guidance, preferring markets to assess incoming data rather than rely on central bank signalling. If he sticks to that approach, it may only fuel volatility.
If the Fed leaves rates unchanged, some initial US dollar selling would not be a surprise given markets are pricing a meaningful chance of a hike. Beyond that, the tone of the statement and how Warsh handles questions will likely determine the market reaction.
Source: Bloomberg
The Yen's Toxic Cocktail While the Fed looms as the headline event, the Bank of Japan's policy decision less than 24 hours later could prove just as important for the near-term directional risk in USD/JPY.
No change in the policy rate is expected, as the implied pricing above reveals, leaving the focus on the updated forecasts and Governor Kazuo Ueda's press conference. In April, the BOJ lowered its FY2026 growth estimate while revising its inflation outlook higher, lifting its core CPI forecast from 1.9% to 2.8%. It also maintained that risks to the inflation outlook remained skewed to the upside.
Source: BOJ
It's also worth remembering that Japan remains heavily reliant on imported energy. The recent rebound in oil and LNG prices not only risks adding to domestic inflation pressures, but also deteriorates Japan's terms of trade, creating another headwind for the yen.
Before the policy decision, traders will receive the BOJ's preferred measure of underlying inflation when the Indicators for Core CPI report is released on Tuesday. Published two business days after the national CPI release, the report strips out government measures such as subsidies, providing a cleaner read on underlying price pressures.
Source: BOJ
At its previous meeting, the BOJ maintained that risks to inflation were skewed to the upside, citing the potential for a weaker yen and higher import prices to place additional upward pressure on prices. Traders should watch to see whether that assessment is maintained or strengthened in light of the recent rebound in energy prices and continued unwind in the yen.
Growth, Inflation and Risk Appetite Collide
Source: TradingView (US EDT)
Beyond central banks, traders will have plenty of other risks events to navigate this week.
In Japan, Friday's Tokyo CPI report remains important even if it has been superseded by the BOJ's underlying measure in term of policy relevance. As a timely lead indicator for national inflation, traders should watch for any evidence that the recent rebound in energy prices is feeding through more quickly into consumer prices.
In the United States, the advance estimate of second-quarter GDP screens as the release most likely to generate volatility. While the report is built on assumptions given a full set of quarterly data is not yet available, it will provide the first broad read on how the US economy performed during the Iran war period.
Personal income, spending and the core PCE deflator for June are released together on Thursday. Core PCE remains the Fed's preferred inflation measure for now, although it rarely delivers meaningful surprises given economists can now accurately map the likely outcome from CPI and PPI data released earlier in the month.
The income and spending figures may therefore be more influential, offering insight into the ability of the US consumer, the powerhouse of the US economy, to continue driving growth. Will income growth be sufficient to sustain spending levels, or will households be forced to dip further into savings? Equally, is there evidence consumers are beginning to rein in spending in response to the inflationary environment?
Friday’s Employment Cost Index (ECI) is another release that can, on occasion, generate volatility given it's one of the Fed's preferred measures of labour costs. A stronger-than-expected reading would fuel concerns about persistent stickiness in services inflation, adding to an already uncomfortable backdrop from rising energy prices.
US earnings season should also be on the radar, headlined by results from Microsoft, Meta and Amazon. Given recent weakness in the AI hyperscalers, an accelerated decline in their share prices could spark a broader risk-off move, increasing the chance of carry trades being unwound. It’s not an immediate risk, but one every trader should be alert to if forced selling were to take place.
Breakout, Consolidate, Repeat
Source: TradingView
The textbook breakout from the symmetrical triangle flagged in last week's outlook played out almost immediately. After coiling throughout much of July, USD/JPY exploded above 163 before pausing beneath a minor downtrend. That consolidation proved temporary, with the pair breaking above 163.24 and extending to fresh multi-decade highs near 164.
Another period of consolidation is now underway, leaving the pair looking as though it may be preparing for another breakout. Immediate resistance is found at 164. A convincing break above that level would bring the big figures such as 165 into view, should the broader uptrend to extend further as favoured.
On the downside, 163.65 is the first level to watch, followed by 163.24. Beneath that, the July uptrend, currently found around 163, and horizontal support at 162.70 become the key technical levels for bulls to defend.
Momentum indicators continue to favour upside. RSI (14) sits at 72, comfortably above the neutral 50 level, while MACD remains above its signal line in positive territory. However, both indicators began to roll over into Friday's close, suggesting upside momentum is beginning to fade. That's not a bearish signal by any stretch, but it does suggest buyers no longer have the same momentum behind them as they did earlier in the week.
SpaceX launched its massive Starship rocket Friday evening from its company town and launch facility in Starbase, Texas, in a 13th test flight and the first since the company's record IPO last month.
The rocket's Super Heavy booster detached from the Starship spacecraft about two minutes into the flight, and made a controlled splashdown in the Gulf.
In a statement following the flight, SpaceX said the landing was not perfect as the booster, "attempted to relight its engines for the landing burn," but only a subset successfully ignited before the "hard splashdown."
The upper stage of the rocket made a "soft splashdown" in the Indian Ocean, SpaceX said, "coming to rest intact in the Indian Ocean and providing critical views of an intact heatshield for the first time."
Employees called the test flight "lucky number 13," in a livestream of the event.
Elon Musk's aerospace and defense contractor designed Starship, the largest rocket ever built or flown, to be fully reusable and to lift more cargo for less cost into orbit. Starship is considered crucial for the company's goal to vastly expand its Starlink satellite network, among other missions.
About 18 minutes into Friday's test flight, SpaceX successfully deployed 20 of its new Starlink V3 satellites into orbit, a first chance for the company to see how they performed in flight. The satellites were intended to burn up after about 20 minutes.
The new satellites, produced at a SpaceX facility in Redmond, Washington, are built to be larger, and more powerful than Starlink's earlier satellites. They're also equipped with solar arrays that generate twice as much power as prior generations, a SpaceX business analyst explained in a livestream.
SpaceX is now developing Starmind satellites, which the company intends to launch and eventually use as orbital data centers.
Besides using their largest rockets to launch the new, larger satellites, SpaceX wants to use the Starship rocket to bring U.S. astronauts back to the moon's surface, and to eventually power manned missions to Mars. The company is preparing Starship for a major NASA test flight next year.
Friday's test flight marked the second for Starship V3, the latest version of the rocket.
TMF Associates' Tim Farrar, a satellite services industry expert, said the test flight showed SpaceX has made some progress with Starship but "remains a long way from achieving rapid reusability of the entire ship." He pointed to problems SpaceX had relighting its Raptor engines on Friday. "Any similar failure during an attempted landing at the company's launch site could cause severe damage to the launchpad," he said.
In a post on X, which is owned by SpaceX, the company said it delayed an earlier test flight planned for Thursday "due to weather." It also previously scrubbed a test flight on July 16, after the rocket's booster triggered a hold, which "shut down the engines right as they were starting to ignite," a SpaceX employee said during a livestream of the earlier event.
SpaceX's stock has dropped in four of the past five weeks, slumping 43% from its peak close on June 16.
The most interesting exchange on Tesla's (TSLA -2.14%) July 22 earnings call wasn't about margins. An analyst asked CEO Elon Musk whether he eventually sees synergies from combining Tesla with SpaceX (SPCX -2.85%), the rocket and satellite company that went public in June. Musk didn't say yes. More notably, he didn't say no.
There's "more and more overlap" between the two companies, Musk said on the call. He pointed in particular to Terafab, SpaceX's planned chipmaking venture, which he said is "really going to be a gigantic project."
As for a deal, Musk said he couldn't discuss "combining companies and that kind of thing" in that setting. It has to happen through "the appropriate process."
That is not a denial. And coming from the CEO of both companies, it's enough to make a merger a live question for two of the largest shareholder bases in the market.
Image source: White House.
The overlap is already real business The companies are intertwined today. Tesla's general counsel noted on the call that the relationship deepened this year through an investment and a framework agreement between the two companies. Grok, the AI (artificial intelligence) assistant built into Tesla vehicles, comes from the xAI business SpaceX absorbed before its initial public offering (IPO). Tesla's Cybercab robotaxis are expected to lean on SpaceX's Starlink network for connectivity. And Terafab could eventually supply the chips Tesla needs for its cars and robots.
Bankers have noticed, too. JPMorgan told clients this month that a combination would make strategic sense on paper, uniting Musk's ambitions in AI, transportation, and space under one roof. But the firm also cautioned that executing a deal is a far messier matter than the logic suggests.
The messy part deserves the emphasis. Two obstacles stand out.
Today's Change
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The first is pricing. A merger needs an exchange ratio (how many shares of one company each share of the other is worth), and both of these stocks trade on stories rather than current profits. SpaceX carries a $1.5 trillion market value on trailing-12-month revenue of about $19 billion (up 33% from the year before), and it's still unprofitable. Tesla, valued at about $1.2 trillion, trades at more than 300 times earnings after this week's post-earnings sell-off.
Musk himself complicates the math. He controls about 85% of SpaceX's voting power, versus about 20% of Tesla's, so he effectively sits on both sides of the negotiation. Tesla's board needs an independent process robust enough to survive the shareholder lawsuits that reliably follow deals like this one.
The second obstacle is Washington. SpaceX is a major defense and government contractor. Tesla operates one of its largest factories in Shanghai and depends on China for a meaningful share of its sales and supply chain. Folding a national security asset into a company with deep Chinese exposure invites regulatory scrutiny in both countries -- and Starlink isn't even approved to operate in China. Of course, a review like that could stretch on for years, with no guarantee of approval.
Which shareholders would a deal reward? It depends entirely on the exchange ratio, and that's the problem. SpaceX shareholders own the larger company by market value, and the asset Musk has the deeper economic interest in. Tesla shareholders get exposure to Starlink's fast-growing revenue in a deal, but they'd be paying with stock the ultimate decision maker has less personal incentive to defend. Every version of the math involves the same person on both sides of the table.
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My take is that investors shouldn't own either stock because of a potential merger. A combination may eventually happen, and Musk's comments suggest the idea is at least alive. But the timing and terms are unknowable today, and the regulatory path could take years.
What investors can evaluate is each business on its own. Tesla just reported a 1.4% operating margin for the second quarter as it pours money into AI and robotaxis, and its shares sank about 14% on Thursday. SpaceX is weeks away from its first earnings report, due Aug. 4. Both stocks already price in spectacular futures, and I think each company should have to prove its own case first. Treat any merger as news to react to if it comes. Betting on it in advance is just speculation.
Coca-Cola (KO +1.33%), the world's largest beverage company, will post its second-quarter earnings report on July 28. Analysts expect its revenue and adjusted EPS to rise 4% and 7%, respectively, year over year. That growth should be driven by its market share gains in Asia and Latin America, robust sales in North America, the strength of its non-soda drinks, cooling inflation, and its supply chain optimization efforts.
During its first-quarter report on April 28, Coca-Cola predicted its organic revenue would rise 4%-5% for the full year, while its comparable EPS would grow 8%-9% (6%-7% on a constant-currency basis). It didn't provide an exact outlook for the second quarter, but it predicted the currency tailwinds would boost its organic revenue and comparable EPS.
Image source: Getty Images.
That outlook seems bright, but there's another simple reason to load up on Coca-Cola's stock before its next earnings report: it's a Dividend King with an evergreen business model.
Why is Coca-Cola an "evergreen" Dividend King? A Dividend King is a company that has raised its payout for at least 50 consecutive years. Coca-Cola is part of that elite club because it's raised its dividend annually for 64 consecutive years, even as the world endured five global recessions. It currently pays a forward yield of 2.6%, and its low trailing payout ratio of 65% gives it plenty of room for future dividend hikes.
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Coca-Cola supports its dividends with an evergreen business model. It only sells the concentrates and syrups for its beverages, while its independent bottling partners produce and distribute the finished drinks. That asset-light model enables it to maintain high operating margins while generating ample cash for dividends and buybacks.
Over the past few decades, Coca-Cola expanded its portfolio to include bottled water, teas, fruit juices, energy drinks, sports drinks, coffee, and even alcoholic beverages to reduce its dependence on sugary sodas. It also refreshed its classic sodas with smaller serving sizes, healthier versions, and new flavors.
That scale and diversification make Coca-Cola a safe stock to hold in bull and bear markets. It has a wide moat, plenty of ways to counter inflation and other macroeconomic shocks, and will continue to grow as it leverages AI to optimize its inventory, consolidate its bottling network, and expand its lineup of higher-growth dairy, energy, and sugar-free drinks. Coca-Cola might seem like a boring blue-chip stock, but that's exactly why it's worth buying in this frothy and turbulent market.
Key Takeaways More Mag 7 earnings are on their way, with AMZN, META, AAPL, and MSFT all slated to report soon. Alphabet's results showed a solid job of operationalizing and monetizing AI capabilities.Overall, total S&P 500 earnings for Q2 are expected to grow 39.1% YoY on 12.3% higher revenues. The market reaction to Alphabet’s (GOOGL - Free Report) Q2 results has significantly raised the bar for its Magnificent Seven peers that are on deck to report results this week, namely Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) and Meta Platforms (META - Free Report) on Wednesday, July 29th, and Apple (AAPL - Free Report) and Amazon (AMZN - Free Report) on Thursday, July 30th.
The raised bar isn’t solely related to AI-centric capex spending plans and the effect that is having on cash flows, though that is a very critical issue for most investors, but also to the impressive operating momentum that Alphabet showed in its cloud business. Performance on the cloud front will be closely watched for Amazon and Microsoft, with the latter’s recent showing on this front having been less than satisfactory.
Alphabet showed further acceleration in its cloud business, with Google Cloud revenues up +82% from the same period last year. This follows year-over-year Google Cloud revenue growth of +45.2% in the preceding period (2026 Q1), +38.5% in 2025 Q4, and +35% in 2025 Q3. Alphabet’s results on the search, advertising, and AI monetization fronts were equally impressive.
Alphabet’s results show that it is doing a better-than-expected job of operationalizing and monetizing AI capabilities. But this wasn’t enough to convince market participants to buy the stock, with another capex hike becoming the trigger for the sell-off.
Alphabet’s free cash flow moved into negative territory for the first time in its public life, with management indicating that the Q2 cash flow trends will likely persist over the coming quarters as well, with a combination of debt and equity issuance making up for the shortfall. Alphabet shares the capex and cash flow issues with Amazon, Meta, and, to a smaller extent, Microsoft.
Alphabet’s reported earnings benefited from the unrealized gain on its SpaceX stake, which accounted for an estimated $77.4 billion in the company’s $112.1 billion net income. If we use Alphabet’s reported Q2 earnings, then quarterly earnings for the Mag 7 group as a whole are on track to increase +83.1% from the same period last year on +26% higher revenues, as the chart below shows.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The Q2 earnings growth pace for the Mag 7 group becomes a relatively more ‘reasonable’ +28% once Alphabet’s non-operating unrealized gain is stripped out.
The chart below shows the Mag 7 group’s earnings and revenue growth on a calendar year basis.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Importantly, the Mag 7 group has consistently enjoyed a steadily improving earnings outlook, with analysts raising their estimates, as the chart below shows.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
It is useful to keep in mind that the Mag 7 group is on track to bring in more than 27% of all S&P 500 earnings this year, up from 16.4% of the total in 2020, and accounts for 32.2% of the index’s market capitalization.
Q2 Earnings Season Scorecard
Through Friday, July 24th, we have seen quarterly results from 135 S&P 500 members or 27% of the index’s total membership. Total earnings for these are up +67.8% from the same period last year on +12.6% revenue gains, with 87.4% of the companies beating EPS estimates and 79.3% of them beating revenue estimates.
The comparison charts below put the Q2 earnings and revenue growth rates for these index members in a historical context.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The comparison charts below put the Q2 EPS and revenue beats percentages in a historical context.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
As you can see above, the Q2 EPS beats percentage for this group of 135 index members is a new 5-year high, while the revenue beats percentage is toward the high end of the 5-year range.
The unusually strong earnings growth rate of +67.8% and revenue growth of +12.6% are benefiting from Micron and Alphabet’s blockbuster results.
The chart below shows the reported Q2 earnings growth picture, with and without Alphabet and Micron.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
As you can see above, Micron and Alphabet account for more than 60% of all reported earnings growth at this stage, an unusual level of earnings concentration.
The Q2 reporting cycle ramps up in a big way this week, with more than 800 companies on deck to report results, including 172 S&P 500 members (34% of the index’s membership). In addition to the aforementioned Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Meta, this week’s line-up ranges from Exxon and Chevron to Visa and Mastercard, Starbucks, Ford, and many other bellwether operators.
The Earnings Big Picture
The chart below gives you a big-picture view of the overall earnings picture. It highlights current Q2 expectations right alongside actual results from the past four quarters and forecasts for the next four (including 2026 Q2).
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
As you can see here, total S&P 500 earnings for 2026 Q2 are expected to increase by +39.1% compared to the same period last year on +12.3% higher revenues.
Of the 16 Zacks sectors, 11 are expected to have positive earnings growth in Q2, with Energy (earnings growth of +126.1%), Tech (+91%), Basic Materials (+49.1%) and Finance (+24%) as the major growth drivers.
Q2 earnings growth drops to +14.3% from +39.1% once the Tech sector’s substantial contribution is excluded.
The +126.1% earnings growth for the Energy sector is meaningful, but aggregate earnings growth would still be +35.2% on an ex-Energy basis.
The Tech sector has been a pillar of earnings growth over the last two years, and the sector is expected to continue playing that role in Q2 and beyond. The chart below shows current earnings and revenue growth expectations for the sector relative to what the sector actually reported in the preceding two periods and what is expected in the following three quarters.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The Tech sector is unlike the other 15 Zacks sectors, as it alone brings in 41% of all S&P 500 earnings and accounts for 45.6% of the index’s total market capitalization.
As noted earlier, Alphabet’s Q2 results included a huge boost from a non-operating side, specifically the unrealized gain it has been forced to book on its SpaceX stake following that company’s IPO. Alphabet isn’t alone in having an outsized impact on the sector’s growth pace, as Nvidia and Micron are also exerting an outsized influence.
Excluding the contribution from Alphabet, Micron and Nvidia, Q2 earnings for the rest of the Zacks Tech sector would be up +27.6% (vs. +91% otherwise).
The chart below shows the Tech sector’s earnings growth picture, with and without these three companies.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The chart below shows the aggregate growth picture for the S&P 500 index on a calendar year basis.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
As with Q2 expectations, the Tech sector has an outsized impact on the annual earnings picture as well. Total Tech sector earnings are expected to increase +40.1% from the same period last year on +18.5% higher revenues.
Excluding the Tech sector’s substantial contribution, total S&P 500 earnings for the year would be up +13.2% (vs. +22.4% otherwise).
As we saw with Q2 expectations, contributions from Alphabet, Micron, and Nvidia are also significant here, as the chart below shows.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The way to read this chart is that the +22.4% earnings growth expected in 2026 drops to +13.2% once the Tech sector is excluded and +15% once only Alphabet, Nvidia, and Micron are excluded from the index. In other words, one-third of all S&P 500 earnings growth in 2026 is coming from these three Tech companies.
For a detailed view of the evolving earnings picture, please check out our weekly Earnings Trends report here >>>> S&P 500 Earnings Beats Hit 5-Year Highs as Growth Accelerates
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) AMD Advancing AI 2026 July 23, 2026 12:30 PM EDT
Company Participants
Lisa Su - Chair, President & CEO
Vamsi Boppana - Senior Vice President of Artificial Intelligence
Daniel McNamara - Senior VP and GM of Compute & Enterprise AI
Jack Huynh - Senior Vice President and GM of Computing & Graphics Group
Matthew Ramsay - Vice President of Financial Strategy & Investor Relations
Forrest Norrod - Executive VP & GM of the Data Center Solutions Business Group
Conference Call Participants
Tom Brown
Sachin Katti
Santosh Janardhan - Meta Platforms, Inc.
Andrew Feldman - Cerebras Systems Inc.
Philippe Tillet
Jeremy Legg - AT&T Inc.
Jeetendra Patel - Cisco Systems, Inc.
Stacy Rasgon - Bernstein Institutional Services LLC, Research Division
Christopher Caso - Wolfe Research, LLC
Joshua Buchalter - TD Cowen, Research Division
Joseph Moore - Morgan Stanley, Research Division
Benjamin Reitzes - Melius Research LLC
Simon Leopold - Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division
Aaron Rakers - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division
Srinivas Pajjuri - RBC Capital Markets, Research Division
Atif Malik - Citigroup Inc., Research Division
Blayne Curtis - Jefferies LLC, Research Division
Bhavtosh Vajpayee - CLSA Limited, Research Division
Conversation
Lisa Su
Chair, President & CEO
Good morning.
Unknown Attendee
Good morning.
Lisa Su
Chair, President & CEO
That's a pretty good, good morning. I'm going to try one more good morning. And welcome to Advancing AI 2026. It's so great to be back here in San Francisco and to see so many friends and partners and customers and especially all the developers that are here with us today. And I want to say a big welcome to everyone who's joining us online from around the world.
This is my absolute favorite event of the year. It's where we bring the entire AI ecosystem together to show what we've been building and where we're going next. And this year, this is our biggest show
NVIDIA logo is seen in this illustration taken July 20, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
CompaniesSAN FRANCISCO, July 24 (Reuters) - Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab and South Korea's SK Group on Friday unveiled a more than $500 billion AI initiative spanning large-scale AI data centers and next-generation memory, Nvidia said.
The initiative includes a long-term partnership with SK Hynix (000660.KS), opens new tab to secure next-generation memory supply for Nvidia and jointly develop high-bandwidth memory for AI training, AI agents and physical AI applications.
The Reuters Inside Track newsletter is your essential guide during the World Cup. Sign up here.
As part of the initiative, SK Telecom (017670.KS), opens new tab plans to build a 2-gigawatt AI data center powered by Nvidia's Vera Rubin chips and SK Hynix's HBM4 high-bandwidth memory, with the first facility due to come online in 2027, Nvidia added.
Separately, Nvidia said it, Naver (035420.KS), opens new tab and Brookfield plan to expand Naver's AI data center in South Korea.
Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco and Heekyong Yang and Jack Kim in Seoul; Editing by Chris Reese
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang talks about investing in South Korea, a new partnership with the SK Group, cybersecurity and China's approach to artificial intelligence. He speaks exclusively to Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow in San Francisco after appearing at a Korean AI summit.
Visa’s managed platform, Samsung Wallet’s USDC demonstration and Ramp’s business accounts show competition shifting from token issuance to control of banking relationships, software, settlement and distribution.
Deposit-dependent banks fear stablecoins could drain low-cost funding, while firms such as Goldman Sachs may see opportunity in trading, custody and tokenized markets. Delayed U.S. legislation and tougher global anti-money-laundering scrutiny leave the rules unresolved.
Smartphones, FinTech platforms and regional institutions could put stablecoins in front of millions of users, but consumer awareness remains low and the industry has yet to demonstrate a compelling everyday advantage over cards and bank payments.
Stablecoins spent years waiting for regulatory legitimacy. Now that legitimacy is creating a more complicated problem: almost everyone wants a piece of the business.
As a result, the biggest stablecoin news this week didn’t come from crypto-native companies. Visa launched a new Visa Stablecoin Platform (VSP) that gives financial institutions, FinTechs and crypto companies a single managed environment for minting, redeeming, holding and transferring stablecoins. Goldman Sachs’ CEO broke with parts of the banking lobby over pending crypto legislation while federal regulators confronted another implementation deadline and Samsung previewed stablecoin functionality inside its consumer wallet.
Individually, none of those developments settles the future of digital dollars. Collectively, they show that stablecoins are no longer primarily a cryptocurrency product. They are becoming a contested layer of financial infrastructure.
See also: This Week in Stablecoins: TradFi Doesn’t Want DeFi. It Wants Blockchain
The Stablecoin Stack Is Up for Grabs The week’s developments do not suggest that one company is winning. They suggest that the competitive battleground is shifting away from who issues the token and toward who controls the software, banking relationships, settlement infrastructure and consumer distribution that make digital dollars usable at scale.
That strategic tension is playing out in Washington, where a newly released draft of the text for the proposed Digital Asset Market Clarity Act is revealing a financial sector fault line of banks versus banks, with each institution assessing whether stablecoins threaten its existing economics or open a new line of business.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, for example, has reportedly expressed support for advancing the Clarity Act, despite objections from banking trade groups concerned about the treatment of stablecoin rewards and the possibility of deposits migrating outside conventional banks. Goldman became a deposit-taking institution after the 2008 financial crisis.
Institutions dependent on low-cost deposits have reason to resist stablecoin products that resemble interest-bearing accounts. PYMNTS covered how on Friday (July 17) the European Central Bank added its voice to banks in the United States in warning that widespread adoption of stablecoins could pull retail deposits out of traditional banks, weakening a critical source of funding for lending.
Firms with large trading, custody, market-making and investment-banking businesses, however, may see more upside in the expansion of tokenized finance. The central question has shifted from whether stablecoins will be legal to what kind of company can profitably operate one.
Still, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Thursday (July 23) that he did not expect the Senate to pass crypto market structure legislation before the August recess, a significant blow to the supposed progress negotiations around the Clarity Act had spurred. At the same time, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is urging governments to bring decentralized finance platforms under anti-money laundering rules when developers, token holders or other identifiable parties retain meaningful control. It warned that many purportedly decentralized platforms are not as decentralized as they claim.
Read more: Banks and Credit Unions Win Crypto Trust by Explaining It First
Distribution Remains the Missing Piece and Unproven Prize Across the consumer end of the market, Samsung used its Wednesday (July 22) Galaxy Unpacked event to demonstrate stablecoin functionality inside Samsung Wallet. The interface reportedly showed USDC capabilities including sending, receiving and funding an account. The potential distribution is substantial because Samsung Wallet is already embedded in the company’s device ecosystem. But the demonstration came without a confirmed launch date or detailed rollout plan, making it a signal of intent rather than a finished consumer product.
The stablecoin industry has become adept at announcing infrastructure. It has been less successful at proving that mainstream consumers need a blockchain-based dollar for everyday domestic purchases. Existing card and bank-payment systems provide fraud protection, dispute resolution, credit and familiar rewards. Stablecoins must either reproduce those benefits or solve a problem conventional payments handle poorly.
A day earlier, on Tuesday, the financial operations platform Ramp announced it had begun offering customers stablecoin accounts and payments through a new business-focused offering.
Still, the PYMNTS Intelligence report “The Wallet Effect: How Credit Unions Can Close the Digital Currency Access Gap,” produced in collaboration with Velera, found that only 7% of credit union members said their institutions support cryptocurrency transactions, while 67% did not know whether that capability existed. Uncertainty was even greater around stablecoins, with 70% of members unsure whether their credit unions supported them.
A typical dividend raise from a blue chip stock usually isn’t very major, with most coming in the low single-digit range. That sure wasn’t the case with Bank of America (BAC +1.26%) on Friday, as the big lender cranked its quarterly payout 14% higher.
That’s actually more or less in line with the dividend raises of other major banks. But what sets this one apart is that the generous bump is paired with another shareholder-pleasing program that’s unusually robust.
Image source: Getty Images.
Double-digit differenceBefore we look at that, let’s shine a light on the dividend raise, as it’s substantial and therefore worthy of a few words.
With that 14% increase, Bank of America’s next quarterly distribution will be $0.32 per share. This is scheduled to be paid on Sept. 25 to investors of record as of Sept. 4. It would yield almost 2.1% on the company's most recent closing stock price.
In the words of company CEO Brian Moynihan, that double-digit enhancement “reflects the strength of our earnings, the power of our franchise and our confidence in Bank of America’s ability to drive long-term growth and create value for shareholders.”
Moynihan is paid well to make such pronouncements, but in this instance, it’s justified. Recent developments with the company have been largely positive, such as its passing of the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) annual bank stress tests (with flying colors, no less). Mere weeks after the test results were released in late June, Bank of America published its second-quarter earnings. These showed robust year-over-year increases in fundamentals like revenue and profitability, and upticks in core items such as deposits and loans/leases.
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40 billion reasons to like this lenderSo there are increasingly more greenbacks for Bank of America to devote to shareholder remuneration. These funds also back up the company’s share repurchase program, and that’s a doozy these days.
In its dividend raise announcement, the company made sure to mention that it has plenty left in the tank with the initiative.
It was approved last August by the bank’s board of directors, which authorized $40 billion for such purchases. The company hasn’t been shy to dip into this; in the first half of this year alone, it spent $13.2 billion on buybacks, which makes the half-year total dividend outlay of $4 billion — more than many companies spend on shareholder payouts in their lifetimes — look small by comparison.
Those purchases, combined with the 2025 buys, have left roughly $17 billion under authorization in the program. Companies typically buy back their own stock as a means of supporting its price, and/or lifting future earnings per share (EPS) amounts to desired levels — repurchased shares are either retired or banked as treasury shares; either way, they are removed from the public float.
An impressive backupSince reporting those second-quarter figures, Bank of America stock has — justifiably, in my opinion — outpaced the benchmark S&P 500 index. So, at the moment, it doesn’t necessarily need the support that a well-funded share buyback initiative can offer. Still, it’s comforting that there are billions of dollars ready to be deployed in case such assistance is needed. That helps boost investor sentiment on the stock.
Generally, I don’t think it’s wise to transact in any company’s shares primarily on the strength or weakness of its equity repurchase program. Yet Bank of America’s is immense enough to make a difference. Combined with that meaty dividend raise, the direction in which its fundamentals are going, and the decent health of our economy despite some potential headwinds, the company’s stock looks like a very strong buy candidate now.
In this episode of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, Motley Fool contributors Tyler Crowe, Matt Frankel, and Jon Quast discuss:
Uber’s acquisition of Delivery Hero.How “sticky” are ridesharing apps.GE Aerospace’s earnings.Can AI infrastructure cause supply chain headaches for others?Mailbag: How to view emerging industries & technologies.To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.
A full transcript is below.
This podcast was recorded on July 16, 2026.
Tyler Crowe: Who ordered the Uber acquisition today on Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing? Welcome to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. I'm your host for today, Tyler Crowe, and today I'm joined by longtime contributors Jon Quast and Matt Frankel. Earning season is starting to heat up. Not as many companies are rolling in. We're going to start to see that later in the month and early August, but we do have some early trickles in. Notably today, we had GE Aerospace. We'll also get to our mailbag, where we have some listener questions.
But we want to start today with the big announcement from Uber Technologies, who announced that they are going to acquire Germany delivery company, Delivery Hero in a $14.8 billion deal. Now, this has been telegraphed a little bit. Uber already had an outstanding stake in the company, and they agreed to acquire from, I believe it's, I hope I don't pronounce this wrong, but Prosus, they had a stake in the company, and they've agreed to sell it to Uber. Uber is going to have a 53% stake with this and then do a voluntary, “Hey, who wants to sell their shares to us, we'll buy them at a set price.” That's how the deal is structured. There's also a little bit of sell some of Deliver Hero’s assets in certain countries to avoid any jurisdiction, regulatory, anti trust issues. But I think the big thing to me, and, Matt, I want to really read in on this here. When I think of Uber, we always think of, like, hailing more specifically than delivery, and so this $14.8 billion deal seems to be like, Hey, we really want to be much more in delivery than we do just the ride share part.
Matt Frankel: Most investors don't realize it. But Uber's mobility, which is the name for the Rideshare business, and their delivery bookings are almost dead even, almost 50-51 in terms of booking volume. Now, the average person spends more on a delivery order than on a mobility order. You might get an Uber ride somewhere for $10, but the average meal you have delivered $50 or $60. Both grew about 25% year over year in the most recent quarter, but Rideshare is still Uber's biggest revenue source by a significant margin. They take roughly a 50% larger cut from bookings on ride-share versus delivery. This deal will make the delivery business significantly larger by bookings compared with Rideshare.
The bigger question here, as you mentioned, is why? Delivery Hero has an established presence in several markets already, so this allows Uber to expand its physical reach without building market by market, which is expensive and a risk. It roughly doubles the number of markets where Uber will offer both delivery and Rideshare in its app, which is a big competitive advantage. Speaking of competitive advantages, this is really a response to DoorDash, which has been aggressively expanding internationally and is really trying to outcompete Uber.
Tyler Crowe: Jon, not to like completely discount it, too, but in addition to rideshare delivery, which is creating this ecosystem, they do have a rather burgeoning advertisement business, as well, that, can layer onto this rather well, right?
Jon Quast: I think that there's absolutely an angle here that we need to consider with advertising, not to discount anything that Matt just said, I mean, there is a competitive angle here to this acquisition of delivery hero. Certainly DoorDash figures into the equation somewhere. But as you think about what Uber is, people don't realize how big and important the advertising business is. Really, it was the launch of advertising that propelled Uber to become a profitable business a few years ago and really just changed those economics considerably.
Now, if you think about what does it take to build a digital ad business, you really want platform adoption and interaction with that platform so that you can display the digital ad to the user, to the eyeballs, if you will. If it can get people adopting the platform more, the Uber platform, if it can get people interacting with the platform more, that's a greater chance for digital advertising. You want to grow both the mobility, the ride sharing, but also the delivery, the meal delivery because that's another, if you will, just another touch point with that end user. I think that as you're considering, hey, how do we build this food delivery or grocery delivery even more than what we have today? I think that there is an aspect that the management team is thinking, how do we get people interacting more with the platform because we want to show them an ad because that's really good for our business?
Tyler Crowe: It's funny, they say bad news comes in three, but I just want to say, news in general comes in three because, Matt, you, myself, and our Tuesday potting buddy, Lou Whiteman, we actually had a member live Q&A earlier this week, and Uber came up, specifically related to a lawsuit or a legal fight that they're picking with Alphabet's Waymo and it's related to autonomous taxis in Washington, D.C. area. We don't have to get into the details, but it's basically like Uber is saying, Hey, you need some humans every once in a while, and Waymo saying, No, you don't. But look, the broader point was, I think the legal fight exposed that, these ride-hailing or ride-sharing apps, whatever we want to call them, may not necessarily have that sticky network effect as much as people have initially believed. But does that same problem show itself in the food delivery segment, Ubers, delivery, DoorDash? Does that segment of the baby, is it as sensitive to this network, that, Well, I can pick whatever app I want, and it's not quite as sticky as, maybe food delivery is?
Matt Frankel: Well, it's not an easy answer. One conclusion that we drew in the discussion that you're talking about is that Waymo doesn't really need Uber's app to dominate a market. It certainly helps, especially at first, but it isn't totally necessary on a long-term basis. Riders are simply going to gravitate toward the largest and most liquid booking marketplace in their area. With delivery, there's even less stickiness in a lot of ways. Most people have two or three delivery apps on their phone. Many restaurants are on multiple platforms, so it's not exclusive. Usually, at least DoorDash and Uber Eats, and customers can price compare between the two apps. Some run fee specials on one app, but not the other. It's really not a sticky platform, but on the other hand, the Uber 1 membership platform that covers rides and delivery, that can be a competitive advantage when it comes to customer loyalty. DoorDash doesn't have the rideshare aspect of that. But the acquisition shows that scale and market density are really the true cues to winning in this business, not a sticky customer base.
Jon Quast: I just want to add on here a little bit. When we talk about network effects, I think that Uber does have a network effect, and it is a big deal. You think about what does it have? It has a two-sided marketplace. You have the consumer on one end, the person who needs a ride, but then you also have the driver on the other end. These are people voluntarily coming to the Uber platform saying, I'm going to offer my services here because there are potential customers on the other side of that marketplace and vice versa. That is really powerful, and I think that when you are a brand such as Uber, that is ubiquitous in many regards, that makes a big deal.
But what Waymo does is it's actually disrupting the game in an important way. It's not a two-sided marketplace. It's a one-sided marketplace. Can you gain that ubiquity with the one-sided business model cause you don't need the driver? That's my point. You're having the driverless cars. Really, it's just the proliferation of the vehicles themselves in those markets. It's disrupting the game, not that Uber doesn't have a powerful network effect. If we're playing the two-sided marketplace game, that's really important. But if autonomous vehicles are able to change the rules of the game by offering the one sided marketplace, I think that's where, this does get a little bit disruptive.
Tyler Crowe: All right, so we've got burgeoning advertising business that's layered on. It's creating profitability. It's growing market share and overall revenue and deliveries for all of it's part of the apps. But, we're talking about the risks here. I want to put you a little bit both on the spot with our last question here. Shares of Uber are more or less flat for a little over two years now, and I think they traded it I think when I checked this morning it's like 18 times earnings. Is this deal for Deliver Hero enough of a move-the-needle deal for this company? Or do you see this as like, it's just still treading water? I can't say I'm too interested in the stock right now.
Matt Frankel: For me, the answer is not really, and for two reasons. For one, this feels like more of a defensive move to me than an offensive growth strategy. No. 2, the multiple compression we've seen in Uber lately. You mentioned the stock's been flat for two years, even though the business has grown. It's primarily from worries about the ride-share side of the business, specifically Waymo, as a real threat to that part of the business. For those reasons, I don't think this is going to be a needle mover, but it's going to, be a preventative move.
Jon Quast: This is just a hot take for me, but I'm pretty lukewarm on this deal for Uber, mostly because it already has this really large international presence as a brand. I think it has incredible brand recognition globally. Then to acquire these assets from delivery hero and Uber CEO saying that he really appreciates some of these assets, I don't see that these assets are superior to its own. I think that Uber has superior assets. To spend this much money to acquire what I would consider inferior assets in international markets, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, so I'm lukewarm on this deal right now, still processing it, but that's how I feel.
Tyler Crowe: All right, fair enough. Coming up after the break, we're going to talk about GEO spaces earnings.
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Tyler Crowe: Last week on the podcast, we talked about GE Vernova quite a bit, talking about the advantages, disadvantages, how it's been the strange darling of the GE breakup. It only seems fair that we discussed GE Aerospace because it did report earnings earlier today. The company's results beat expectations. Management raised guidance. But as we're taping this show right now, shares are down about 3.2%. Guys, can you help me connect the dots here. At least, as far as I saw, it seemed pretty good.
Matt Frankel: For one thing, and I know Jon has some thoughts about this, the market clearly had high expectations going into this. I was trading for about 50 times forward in earnings before this report. Even though management raised guidance, they still flagged a few things that represent uncertainty, like elevated jet fuel prices, the macro environment, things like that. Demand is clearly outpacing supply here, which is good for pricing power, at least in the short term, but it also means that GE can't fully capture its opportunity right now, and I think that's a little bit of what investors are reacting to, as well.
Jon Quast: I would definitely double down on the valuation component here. You think about stocks that outperform the market. Usually growth is a very big component of that outperformance, and you look at how big and mature GE Aerospace is at this stage of the game. It's hard for me to imagine it's sustaining above average growth over the long term from here, and to Matt's point, trading right now at I believe it's 43 times its earnings, that's quite elevated relative to the average valuation of the stock market right now. I think that even if the stock, I think there's a case where the stock could drop further to come down to a reasonable valuation, but even if it doesn't, I think that it's going to have to sustain some really powerful, impressive growth over the next several years just to justify where it's at right now. I think that even though it did deliver that double beat, I think that investors are saying, maybe this is a little bit too hot to handle right now, and we'll just trim our position.
Tyler Crowe: The thing that stood out to me, and this is taking it in a slightly different direction, thinking a little bit more of, like, supply chains and what's going on in the manufacturing world of America right now is that commentary from management about that availability of material for spare parts. It wasn't just like, we're running a little short on something. It was specifically like material because there happens to be another major turbine maker, GE Vernova, who also is building way more turbines than they can basically fulfill right now. They've got a five-year backlog on what they need to do. I don't want to sound like a broken record, I would call it, like, the super niche, only maybe five people might get this joke, but whenever I say AI infrastructure, I'm most be like, Pee-Wee Herman was like, Ah, you said the secret word because we seem to do it every single day now.
But, that AI infrastructure build-out and AI's, infrastructure's ability to hoover up every spare dollar of capital or spare part out there. The capital expenditures that are going into this are crowding out a lot of other spaces. As we think about GE Aerospace and supply chains and disruption and like AI being the whale of the manufacturing industry and gobbling up everything it can, is there a real risk for these non-AI companies like GE Aerospace, that could run into supply chain crunches and cost inflation from AI taking up all its spare capacity?
Jon Quast: I want to just try to illustrate a little bit the tension that you're bringing out here, Tyler, and this is a complicated supply chain story with GE Aerospace. If you recall coming out of the pandemic, the pandemic certainly disrupted supply chain immensely, and a huge part of this business is the spare parts business, the repair business, right, that maintenance revenue, and if you look at what it just did in the most recent quarter, GE Aerospace, record internal shop visits. It is fixing stuff at some record volume here and so that's a really big deal. It is coming out of those supply chain constraints from the pandemic, breaking records in some places. But then at the same time, it said that material availability restraints grew 20% from the previous quarter. On one hand, I would say that GE Aerospace is getting it done operationally. It is definitely doing a lot of work and fixing supply chains where it can, and at the same time, as you highlighted, the AI market is just sucking up all this demand out there from so many places. It is still struggling to keep up with supply chain needs, and so it's a complicated story.
Matt Frankel: Spare parts demand is exceeding available supply. They have a $210 billion backlog. They can't get materials fast enough. The parts that go into turbines and data centers aren't identical. But they do use the same universe of specialty metals manufacturers. It's totally possible we'll see costs and lead times here get worse before they get better.
Tyler Crowe: It'll be an interesting thing to see, again, because it is hard to underestimate that ability of AI infrastructure to just suck up all the available resources, considering, you can go like four or five levels down the supply chain right now, and they're like, we're strained, and our backlogs are growing like crazy. It'll be curious to see if anyone that's not AI-related can end up getting the parts they need because it could be a challenge down the road. Coming up after the break, we'll jump into the mailbag.
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Tyler Crowe: Hey, everyone, just a quick reminder. If you want to get a question into us, you can email us at podcast at fool.com. That's podcast with an s at fool.com. It's also in the show description. If you need a link. At three requests when you do it or number one, keep it Foolish. Two, keep it short enough, we can read on air and three, we can't give any personalized advice, so try to keep it as general as possible.
Today's question comes from Suleiman in Saudi Arabia. The question is, hello, fools. I found your podcast my first week of the job in 2024, and I haven't missed a single episode since. Hey, thanks for that Suleiman. That's awesome. I learned so much how to analyze companies and ask right questions. Question that he had was with many new emerging industries, there are some companies that are leading a small market with huge potential for expansion, and the one that he was specifically talking about here is Deep Sea mining. However, the industry is still facing legislative obstacles and operational uncertainties. Is this considered a foolish investment or an unnecessary risk? There's one company that he asked about specifically, and that's The Metals Company, which is Ticker TMC. Guys, I'm going to let you take a swing at it, and then I'll see if I can wrap it up at the end.
Jon Quast: This is a great question, and I think that emerging trends are pretty difficult when it comes to investing, and that is because they are so grounded in the future, none of us are very good at predicting the future with certainty. We all are limited in time and space. It's challenging. There are three questions that I would ask as I approach an emerging trend. Here's the first question. Will it emerge? Second, when will it emerge? Third, how will it emerge? Will it, when will it, and how will it? Those are really three important things to answer if you're going to start investing in a trend.
To the first one, will it emerge? I can rewind the clock to 3D printers when this was just coming out onto the market. I don't even remember how long ago anymore, but it was probably over 10 years ago. I really was a believer that these were going to be in every single home in the United States in the world. It was going to be completely like a TV in your home. You're going to have a 3D printer. Alas, it did not play out that way.
Three-D printing is bigger today than it was 10 years ago, but it didn't play out the way that a lot of us were thinking about at the time, or a lot of people were talking about. Did it emerge? Not really. Second, when will it emerge? Now, quantum computing is another example that we can use here. It's a huge in the public awareness right now, quantum computing is big because there's publicly traded companies and stocks are doing well. But those of us who have followed the quantum computing space much longer, I think, 20 years or so. This has taken a long time to play out. Directionally, I think it's still right, but the speed at which it is being adopted and coming to fruition is way behind what some people would have projected years ago, and maybe there's still a long time yet. When will it emerge? Hard to say. But finally, how will the trend play out?
Because you can theoretically be right about a trend, and you can be right about a timeline, but it might take a different route or go down some different train tracks than you anticipated, and therefore, the opportunity is in a place that you didn't really expect when you started investing. I would use e-commerce as an example here. Did e-commerce play out and very quickly? Yes, it did.
But think about how many of the physical retailers were able to lean into omnichannel. Now, e-commerce played out maybe differently than we thought, so maybe we thought that Walmart would be completely disrupted. But in reality, Walmart’s become one of the largest e-commerce players in the world because it leveraged its existing store base as a distribution center network through omnichannel. It played out quite differently, and I think that you would have invested a little bit differently depending on if you could foresee how it was playing out.
Matt Frankel: I want to expand on what Jon just said about how you can be directionally right about a trend, but the investment opportunities might be a different story. Think of the dot-com era, which is right around when I started investing. Being right about the trend and which companies will be the biggest winners from a trend are two completely different things. The Internet changed the world. No doubt. It's been the biggest technological change in our lifetimes. Period. Some of the highest flying stocks of the dot-com boom, pets.com is a good example. If you just said, who, that's my point. It went to zero, and investors lost a ton of money, but Amazon survived and thrived. It had a true cost advantage. It was building a scale advantage.
Business fundamentals that apply no matter what the trend is. I’m not well-versed in deep-sea mining, at least not enough to intelligently comment on the opportunities there. But quantum computing has a lot of parallels. Should you invest in the pure-play quantum stocks with impressive technologies or the established businesses with deep pockets and just happen to have quantum divisions like Cisco and IBM? The market misjudging timing and, market size with emerging industries is a common pattern. Jon mentioned 3D printing. That's exactly what happened there. Keep that in mind when it comes to position sizing and the real possibility that some of the most hype stocks in any trend could go to zero.
Jon Quast: With this question regarding Deep Sea mining in The Metals Company, let's say that you have satisfied yourself with the answers of will it, when will it, and how will it? The other thing to consider here is the economics. Assuming that Deep Sea mining plays out as a trend in the timeline that you think the metals company is a leader in the space, are the economics of that business at scale ones that are attractive for an investment? Because oftentimes, mining isn't a very compelling investment venture from an economic perspective. The economics are complicated and not always the most attractive. That would be the further question that I would ask once you've answered the other three.
Tyler Crowe: Jon stole my thunder a little bit here because I might be the only deranged person who follows materials in mining of the three of us a little bit. With a lot of these, like, speculative mining companies that are like, pre-revenue, and they put all these things like, Man, if we could mine all of this, it's trillions and trillions of dollars worth of revenue. No. 1, they always tend to over inflate how much is actually, like, available for them to recover. No. 2, they always underestimate the costs. They always tend to overestimate the profits with, the cost of metals at the time that they're acquiring it. On paper in the investor decks, it looks spectacular. But then when, the rubber hits the road and all the capital that means to go into these things, they tend to not turn out great.
Now, I'm not saying that The Metals Company is exactly going to go this way, but I feel like I've read 40 or 50 investor decks that looked a lot like this. One of the things I always say is there are multibillion-dollar mega mining giants out there, and they're not touching this. There's probably a reason. If they were to see some big mining backing from this, that could be the case. But otherwise, this is really, like, you might as well be buying Lottery tickets.
That's my thought on mining. You can tell I'm not exactly a huge fan of it, even though I have studied it in the past. Guys, that's all the time we have for today. Matt, Jon, I want to thank you for sharing your thoughts. I’m going to hit disclosure, and we'll get out of here.
Always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks to talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. Don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements or sponsored content provided for informational purposes only. See our full advertising is closer, please check out our showrooms. Thanks for producer Bart Shannon and the rest of The Motley Fool team for Jon, Matt, and myself. Thanks for listening, and we'll chat again soon.
Shares of Verizon Communications (VZ +5.84%) rose on Friday after the telecom giant highlighted its new AI-fueled expansion plans.
Image source: Verizon Communications.
Robust subscriber growth and surging free cash flow Verizon added 184,000 postpaid phone customers in the second quarter, including its biggest Q2 gains in lucrative postpaid consumer accounts in half a decade.
The wireless carrier also added 348,000 broadband accounts, including 193,000 fixed wireless customers and 155,000 fiber clients.
CEO Dan Schulman said Verizon's new flat-rate unlimited mobile plans and bundled offerings are helping it attract and retain subscribers "based on real value rather than subsidized promotions."
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Lower customer acquisition costs and churn rates are also boosting Verizon's profit margins and cash flow generation.
The telecom titan's adjusted earnings rose 6.6% to $1.30 per share. Its operating and free cash flow surged 16.3% and 24.4%, respectively, to $10.4 billion and $6.4 billion.
Artificial intelligence could boost Verizon's profits These solid results prompted Verizon to lift its full-year financial forecast. Management now sees adjusted earnings per share growing by 6% to 7% to between $4.99 and $5.04 in 2026.
During a conference call with analysts, Schulman disclosed that Verizon recently signed a deal with Alphabet's Google valued at more than $1 billion. The search giant will use Verizon's dark fiber -- unused optical infrastructure that's available for lease or purchase -- to connect its AI data centers.
Schulman said that the deal with Google was "just the beginning" of its new AI-focused growth strategy.
"We have other deals that we expect to announce by year-end that, taken together, are expected to be worth multiple billions of dollars in revenue over the next several years," Schulman said.
Joe Tenebruso has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet. The Motley Fool recommends Verizon Communications. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Verizon (VZ +5.84%) reported second-quarter results on Friday morning, July 24, and the numbers themselves gave income investors plenty to like. But the most interesting disclosure came on the earnings call. CEO Dan Schulman said the telecom giant has signed an agreement worth more than $1 billion to supply dark fiber to Google, the search and cloud company owned by Alphabet, which will use it to connect its data centers.
Dark fiber is fiber-optic cable that the customer leases and lights up with its own equipment, giving it dedicated capacity between facilities. And demand for it is coming from exactly the customers with the deepest pockets in the market right now: companies building out data centers for AI (artificial intelligence).
Meanwhile, at about $46 per share, the stock's dividend yield sits near 6.3%. This makes it a great dividend stock for income. So the question for income investors is whether a new AI infrastructure revenue stream changes the case for owning a high-yield telecom.
I think it does, and in the right direction.
Image source: Verizon.
A growth business Verizon is expanding Schulman told analysts the Google agreement is only the start. He said Verizon expects to announce additional deals by year-end that, taken together, could be worth multiple billions of dollars in revenue over the next several years. The company's low-latency fiber network, he argued, has become exactly the kind of asset AI data centers need.
Management clearly wants investors to see a turning point.
"Our core connectivity business is gaining momentum, and with the emergence of AI infrastructure revenue, we are fundamentally reshaping Verizon's growth trajectory," Schulman said in the company's second-quarter earnings release.
Of course, some perspective keeps this honest. Verizon generated $34.3 billion of total revenue in the second quarter alone, so a fiber agreement worth more than $1 billion spread over several years is small.
But it lands in the right place. Verizon's business segment, which has spent years as the company's sleepiest corner, grew revenue just 2.6% year over year to $7.2 billion in the quarter, though the segment's operating income jumped 37%. A multibillion-dollar pipeline of long-duration fiber contracts would give that segment a reason to grow that it hasn't had in years.
The dividend math got better again Now for the part income investors care about most.
Free cash flow for the first half of 2026 came in at $10.2 billion, up 16% from $8.8 billion a year earlier. Dividends paid over the same six months totaled $5.9 billion. In other words, the payout consumed less than 60% of the company's free cash flow, leaving billions for debt reduction and buybacks.
And the guidance is moving the right way. Management raised its full-year outlook for the second consecutive quarter, now calling for free cash flow growth of 9% to 10% and adjusted earnings per share between $4.99 and $5.04, or growth of 6% to 7%. Additionally, second-quarter adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) of $13.7 billion, up 7.2% year over year, was the highest the company has ever reported.
The trajectory may matter even more than the levels. Mobility and broadband service revenue grew 2.8% year over year in the second quarter, and management expects growth to approach 3% in the third quarter and about 4% in the fourth -- an acceleration, not a plateau.
Subscriber momentum supports the forecast. Verizon delivered 184,000 total postpaid phone net additions, along with its best consumer second-quarter postpaid phone result in five years, and more than 550,000 total mobility and broadband additions.
Of course, this is still a slow-growing business. Total revenue actually fell 0.7% year over year, dragged down by a nearly 20% drop in equipment revenue as upgrade volumes fell and Verizon pulled back on device subsidies. Earnings per share also fell 22%, mostly on special items (the largest a $746 million loss tied to classifying its international wireline connectivity and managed network services business as held for sale), though adjusted earnings per share rose 6.6%.
Today's Change
(
5.84
%) $
2.56
Current Price
$
46.38
But that's exactly why Friday's disclosure matters. For years, the dividend case rested on cost discipline and a slow-growing connectivity business. Now cash flow guidance is rising, subscribers are coming in, and there's a new revenue stream attached to the biggest spending wave in technology. The payout was already well covered. If Schulman delivers the deals he's promising, the conversation starts to shift from covering the dividend to growing it.
So I'd be comfortable owning the stock here for the income. The 6.3% yield pays investors well today -- and Verizon finally has a growth story worth watching while they collect it.
In this episode of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, Motley Fool contributors Travis Hoium, Lou Whiteman, and Rachel Warren discuss:
PayPal’s offer.How Stripe gets a deal done.Why PayPal says “no.” J&J’s earnings.Uber in D.C.How Uber became the incumbent.To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.
A full transcript is below.
This podcast was recorded on July 15, 2026.
Travis Hoium: PayPal may finally have a buyer. Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. I'm Travis Hoium, joined today by Lou Whiteman and Rachel Warren, and guys, we may finally have a deal for the company that has been on the block, a value stock. What in the world are they doing there? PayPal. Rachel, what did we find out this morning and overnight about Stripe potentially buying the company?
Rachel Warren: Major breaking news reports. Payments giant Stripe and private equity firm Advent International have reportedly submitted a joint confidential proposal to buy PayPal for $60.50 a share. That would value PayPal at over $53 billion. As of the stock's closing price yesterday, that was a 28% premium based on their share price at the time. The deal is reportedly backed by about $50 billion in committed bank financing. Now, what's interesting about this is under the terms of the proposal, both Stripe and Advent would take equal stakes to run PayPal as a 50/50 joint partnership, and the idea would be to keep the company intact rather than breaking it up or selling off its core assets. Back to that $53 billion valuation based on the reported terms of the offer.
This is tracking to be larger than the years ago Musk's purchase of Twitter for 44 billion, but it also really highlights how far PayPal has fallen from its pandemic-era peak back in 2021. Back in those days, it posted a market cap of about $360 billion. This is interesting. This is in the middle of what some might call a chaotic internal transition for PayPal. They've got the new president and CEO. He's been pushing a turnaround plan targeting over 1 billion in cost savings.
Now, for Stripe, this is still a private company. We've heard a lot of reports that they might go public in the last few years. Their private valuation is reportedly around $160 billion. Absorbing PayPal could really be a massive way to scale their footprint. Obviously, grants them access to hundreds of millions of active consumer accounts; it would match that consumer brand that PayPal has, with Stripe's backend developer infrastructure could also hand them a place within the digital currency race as they absorb PayPal's stablecoin into their ecosystem. Now, we haven't seen any response from PayPal formally responding to these initial overtures. Wall Street seemed happy in early trading, but there's still a lot that we don't know, guys.
Travis Hoium: Lou, that is the thing here, is if you squint, some of this makes a little bit of sense. But then you look at the structure: 50/50 deal. Stripe is buying PayPal and not can't exactly fold it into your current business, at least seamlessly. This also puts Stripe in a little bit of a strange position because a lot of the payment companies have built on top of Stripe, and now you're a competitor with PayPal. What should we think about this strategically, and how does the private equity piece of this play into it in your mind?
Lou Whiteman: A lot of thoughts here. For once, so Stripe is building their own PayPal. I guess they don't worry about the competition as much as I do. I think you're right. I think that would be an awkward conversation, but they either feel like they have to get there, so they just need to, or they're not worried about that. Here's the thing. There is value in PayPal. There really is. It's a good brand. I don't particularly like the stock. I don't think this is going to work. For one thing, you always, with these things, somebody leaked it. Who leaked it? That's the acquirer who leaked it. The offer was made a month ago or so. This is [OVERLAPPING].
Travis Hoium: That was the other thing that stuck out to me is it's apparently been on the table for a while.
Lou Whiteman: Yes. This is trying to light a fire under PayPal to get a response. Here's the thing. The value in PayPal for me right now is their cash flow, 6 billion of free cash flow. This is a mature company. This is a company that I don't think has a natural pathway for growth. It makes sense to take it private. The advent side of this deal makes all the sense of the world. Use that cash flow to pay down the debt you take on and create value that way. That's just private equity 101? There's a tension here, though. Because a private equity firm has a different motivation and different set of goals than a growthy fintech. This 50/50 partnership, if done right, I guess, is possible.
But there is some inherent tension of running it for Advent's needs versus running it for whatever reason Stripe thinks they need it. It's not impossible, but there's a lot of ways you can go wrong. I think PayPal will reject this. The other thing to note here is because they're such a mature company, about 75% of their ownership is institutional. I'll be honest with you, if I was sitting at that desk, I don't want to own PayPal personally, but if I was one of those institutional holders and I was looking at that cash flow, I would want at least 80. It starts with 80. I don't think, and I could be way off here, but I don't think for the people who matter — if the shareholders that could pressure PayPal to the table — I think there's still a long way to go before this makes sense.
Travis Hoium: Lou, I wanted to ask about this: would be a private company being involved in buying a public company, which means that, in theory, unless they're going to go public through the back door of buying PayPal, which I don't think is probably the case. Like Rachel said, $160 billion valuation in private market, but that's private markets, and a lot of these companies, PayPal, Advent have taken it on the chin over the past year or so. That number may not actually be what the market is going to bear. They're going to have to come up with the capital. I think the reports are they make a couple billion dollars in free cash flow. I have seen numbers that almost all of this deal could be funded with debt through that private equity piece.
What I guess I worry about with a company like Stripe is this was supposed to be one of the hot fin techs, one of the great IPOs potentially coming to the market, and now you're looking at potentially levering up a business I don't know if it's fundamentally in decline, but there's at least a lot of questions about how profitable these payment infrastructure companies are going to be in the future. Is that a massive risk to think about? Stripe is just making a last-gasp effort to grow the business when there's not a lot of growth necessarily left in the core business.
Lou Whiteman: If Stripe is public, that would be a big worry of mine. I think another way of saying what you're saying is that I don't want their cash to go to just paying off the debt if they have opportunities to grow. The thing is, again, PayPal generates so much cash. I do think that whether it's Advent 100% or Stripe involved, I do think that the target cash flows can basically cover the debt or go a long way for there. I think it is more what can we partner with? How can we make this synergistic? But look, that $160 billion number, that is great until you have to try to deploy it. There's a lot of great reasons to be a private company, but one of the great things about being a public company is price discovery. There are millions of people giving their opinion every day on what the value of your shares are versus just a couple of people desperate to get in and a couple of employees desperate to get out. You tend to have higher valuations in private companies for that reason.
This might be more intriguing if they were trying to use it as some crazy way to go public, where they are just putting their arguably overvalued shares to work to swallow this up and generate that cash flow. That might be a neater deal. Then we're talking like Rocket Lab/Iridium, where a young growth company is buying a cash stream. This is just a convoluted mess right now. I see a world where PayPal is taken private. I think it makes a lot of sense in a PE portfolio. The Stripe element, I think they have to go significantly higher to make this work. I could be wrong here, but I do think that, and if so, how far can Stripe go?
Travis Hoium: Definitely a lot that we'll be covering in the future, because PayPal's been in one of these companies that looks like a value stock for a very long time, but the stock just hasn't worked for investors, and maybe this is the best path out. When we come back, we're going to talk about Johnson and Johnson's earnings. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing.
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Travis Hoium: Welcome back to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. Johnson and Johnson reported earnings this morning. Results look solid. At least premarket, the market didn't like what it saw, but Rachel, what do you think about the results from J&J?
Rachel Warren: A few key numbers here. Johnson and Johnson, they brought in just over $25 billion in revenue for the quarter. That was up about 7% from a year ago, adjusted earnings per share of $2.90. That was up about 5% year over year. Both on the top and bottom line, they beat Wall Street's expectations. Management actually hiked their full-year sales guidance to over $101 billion. That's putting Johnson & Johnson on track to cross the hundred-billion-dollar milestone for the very first time in roughly 140 years of company history, across all its iterations.
Now, what did investors like? There was a minor revenue miss in their medical device division, their med tech division. They saw a slight drop in sales for their Abiomed heart Pumps. But I think also we're seeing some hyperfixation on short-term patent anxieties. Now, this is something that flicks the life cycle of every pharmaceutical company, even the biggest and best in the world. For a long time, they have generated tremendous growth from their blockbuster drugs to Alora. That is a drug that is now seeing a lot of competition from biosimilars, and so that's dragging down some of their legacy.
Now, I'm a long-term shareholder of Johnson and Johnson. If you're a long-term investor in this business, I think today's drop, at least in the early morning hours, this is short-term market noise. This is a business that has increased its payout for over six decades every single year in counting. They have a very diversified revenue engine. They have a lot of newer business additions as well from new blockbuster drugs, and they're rolling out their next Gem Blockbusters, no major patent risks until the early 2030s beyond Sta. A lot to like about this business.
Lou Whiteman: Rachel summed up pretty well. One note on the med tech business, and I think it's an interesting aspect. We don't think of healthcare as cyclical because people are always getting sick and always need to get better. But there is a cyclical element in here, and I think the med tech part yesterday we saw Intuitive Surgical down a lot and a lot of device companies and supply companies fall. HCA, the big public hospital chain, said the number of surgeries they performed in the quarter are down. To me, that says that whatever's going on in the med tech business, that isn't a J&J problem. That isn't anything specific to STEM. That's a macro problem. But it is, I think, as investors, that's just the cyclicality of healthcare. We don't want to get political here, but there are a lot of reasons why that surgeries may go down right now, from healthcare coverage to economic woes. We saw this in the pandemic, where surgeries just went down. That's probably the most obvious example. But I think for J&J, it's investors and Intuitive Surgical, too. I don't think there's anything to worry about when you see it affecting everybody, but it is just an interesting odd thing. I don't think we think with healthcare is that there is a cyclicality.
Travis Hoium: You would think that raising guidance, I think both on the top and bottom line, would be a good thing for a stock, but investors don't seem to think that at least early in trading shares are down about 0.6% as we're recording. We'll see where this one goes in the future. When we come back, we're going to talk about the drama that Uber is having in Washington, D.C. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Investing.
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Travis Hoium: Welcome to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. We've talked a lot on this show, at least, especially on Wednesdays, about Uber autonomous vehicles and the future of that business long term. I'm a bull on Uber's case as the disruptor and the aggregator, but Lou, seems like they're taking a little bit of a different approach in D.C.
Lou Whiteman: They are not acting like a disruptor anymore, Travis. Uber is acting like a nervous dinosaur, a nervous incumbent, period.
Travis Hoium: I actually hate that you're making, I think, a compelling argument that that is the case.
Lou Whiteman: I'm not going to rub it in your face and say we were talking about this a year ago, Travis. We should have seen this coming. But look, the good news here is that for all of us is that I think the age of autonomy has arrived. Companies tend to act as partners and be friendly and work together when technology is experimental, when we're just trying to figure it out. The second that it has arrived, that's when the knives come out, and they fight, and that is really what's going on. In Washington, specifically, Waymo would like to just operate Waymo. Uber opposes the bill that would allow this, and they have been lobbying instead for a system that will require Robotaxis to operate on a ride-hailing network that also uses human drivers. Do you catch that? They would like Waymo to have to go to an existing third-party network. I don't know who that would be. In Lyft, maybe, but I think we know what they're trying to do.
Here's the thing. Uber doesn't have a driverless solution. That was their choice, and it probably was a good choice, considering the money that they'd have to spend, but their product at this moment is their inventory of customers. It is very important for them to make sure that that product is exposed to the surface that you can't bypass that product, 15 years ago, Uber was the disruptor. They were the ones trying to tear down regulations. They were the ones trying to rip out the rules. Now they are the defenders of the horse carriage in the age of the automobile. Their goal is to use regulatory, capture regulation to slow down the transition, not disrupt the status quo that works pretty well for them. It will work for a while. It's a very compelling story. Uber is up there talking about all of the jobs that will be lost, which is really funny if you look back at their narrative over the years. But it won't last forever, and as an investor, I think we have to be aware of that.
Travis Hoium: Yes, Rachel, the interesting thing here is, it seems like Uber is not opposed to autonomous vehicles. They just want to make sure that their business model is still intact and is, like Lou said, not disrupted. The other angle to this, and the thing that we've talked about a couple of different times, is their strategy is to basically arm as many autonomous vehicle companies as possible. We can get to Lucid and the challenges that they've had this week, at least in the market. But that's one of the companies that they helped fund. Lucid is working with Nuro to bring autonomous vehicles to market. Uber is going to be one of the buyers of those vehicles. That's not the only company. There's a half dozen or a dozen companies. But none of them are really hitting market at scale yet. I think that seems to be the challenge for Uber is you can't use that network to build the autonomous vehicle fleet if the fleet isn't quite ready to hit the road.
Rachel Warren: I think that's right. There's a couple of things to look at here. First, just taking a step back, you look at Uber's history, which Lou touched upon briefly. Over a decade ago, Uber won the ride-sharing war by using aggressive lobbying to crush a lot of the local tax monopolies. Today, they're facing a different threat from driverless cars. Maybe the old playbook isn't working, and as Lou said, there is a lot of lobbying happening on the Hill, trying to block standalone AVs from taking over, pushing for laws that would force taxes to work on these hybrid networks. There was documentation reporting that came out that showed that, in New Jersey, for example, Uber tried to pass a rule that would force any driverless company to have human drivers handle 85% of their. We saw Uber, Waymo, and their partnership pilot in Phoenix last month.
Uber used to pride itself on being this asset-light tech company that didn't own cars. They have invested billions to buy the driverless hardware, invest in EV companies, like you noted. I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars invested in Lucid. Uber owns, I believe, an 11.5% stake. They plan to buy thousands of their electric vehicles. We saw these viral rumors of Lucid bankruptcy, and then Lucid's executives broke their silence and said, these rumors are completely false. I think it shows how fast Lucid is burning through cash that there was such a deep market panic. But you look at Uber; they have scattered hundreds of millions of dollars across different partners. Lucid, Neuro Cruz, the list goes on, but none of those bets are really scaling yet.
Meanwhile, Waymo is dominating the AV space. They've cleared over 500,000 commercial trips every single week at this point, probably more by now. That's a number that came out a number of months ago. Uber, I think, is still trying to catch up. I do think there's a very real concern here for Uber. I think we're seeing those cracks start to show. It doesn't mean they can't catch up, but I think that they're realizing that the strategies that worked a decade ago are not going to work in the current age, and I think that's what they're trying to figure out.
Lou Whiteman: I got bad news for Lucid holders because I know we're supposed to believe that, a lot like other electric vehicle companies, they are this close to an autonomous solution. As you say, Uber and Lucid are already partners are already working together. Right now today, Uber could use one third of the cash sitting in their bank to just buy Lucid. If Lucid had a valid or anywhere close to happening autonomous project, that is the easy button for Uber. Instead, they're off maybe buying other delivery companies. I think that says all we need to know. I don't want to hear a single bit of hype about Lucid's autonomy being anywhere close; if it was, they'd be a subsidiary of Uber.
Travis Hoium: It will be very interesting to watch this because the vehicles like Lucid are hitting the road. I'm in the Minneapolis area. This was often seen as one of the last places that was going to get autonomous vehicles. My wife, once or twice a week, says, Hey, I saw another Waymo downtown. I know that May Mobility is here testing in one of the suburbs that we live near. Slowly but surely, we're getting to the business model that the future is going to look like, but it seems like Uber is now on a little bit of a defensive position. As an investor, I want to be playing offense, not defense. That does make me a little bit nervous. Hopefully, we'll learn more about that in the future.
As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have one more recommendation, so don't buy yourselves based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows The Motley Fool's editorial standards, and it's not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. See our full advertising disclosure. Please check out our shown. For Lou Whitman, Rachel Warren, and Kristi Waterworth, behind the glass. I'm Travis Hoium. Thanks for listening. We'll see you here tomorrow.
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In this episode of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, Motley Fool contributors Tyler Crowe, Matt Frankel, and Lou Whiteman discuss:
IBM’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.Shifting spending habits from enterprise clients.America’s biggest banks are reaping huge windfalls.Mailbag: How to buy Treasuries?Mailbag: What to make of Toast?To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.
A full transcript is below.
This podcast was recorded on July 14, 2026.
Tyler Crowe: Big banks are loving this market. Today on Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. Welcome to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. I'm your host, Tyler Crowe, and today I'm joined by longtime Fool contributors Lou Whiteman and Matt Frankel. As I hinted with the intro, we're going to get into the blockbuster quarter that just about every bank had that reported today, and it was pretty much anybody that is a major bank in the United States reported today, and it looked fantastic. We're also going to get into some reader emails. But first, we're going to start with the big news moment of the day. That is shares of IBM are down 26% as we are taping this show after the company issued preliminary results for the upcoming quarter that really were not in line with analyst expectations. Now, Lou, this was a big drop. I saw a Bloomberg headline earlier before we got on. It was the biggest drop since, I think, 1968 for the stock more than Black Monday in 1987. What was this big drop for what it seemed to me was a relatively modest revision to what we were seeing? There had to have been more to the story here?
Lou Whiteman: I think there is. How did you say, this isn't the full earnings release. This is preliminary. IBM, basically, all they warned is revenue is going to come in about 17.2 billion short of 17.9 billion. It's not a huge amount. I think what triggered the sell-off is the reasoning given CEO Arvind Krishna said, last few weeks of June, IBM saw clients shift capex towards hardware servers, memory storage, away from Big Blue. That's probably not just a last two weeks at a quarter thing, given the way the stock had traded up. I think that this is a head for the exit, sell the news, a move.
Tyler Crowe: Something in the difference of a $700 million change in revenue. The number sounds big, but again, if we're talking about 17 billion give or take a few hundred million. That's not a big deal. Now, Matt, the three of us did a live event for the Motley Fool back in San Diego a few months ago, and you made the case for IBM stock as one of your top picks right now. Now, I'm not trying to put you on full blast here because the stock is down, and let's all make fun of Matt. But does anything that announced today alter your thinking here. Like we said, this isn't a huge revision, but there seems to be some other stuff going on here.
Matt Frankel: Yes. First of all, I welcome being called out when I make a public call on a stock like this, and then something like today happens. As Lou said, the numbers themselves weren't too awful. That 17.2 billion versus 17.9 billion, that's not worthy of a 26% drop all by itself, but there is more to the story. Earnings per share came in at 293 versus expectations of 302, not worthy of a 26% drop. This would be IBM's worst single day ever, by the way. The previous biggest one-day drop they had was Black Monday in 1987, and this would exceed that.
The question that seems to be on investors’ minds and the one that is more worthy of the drop we're seeing is if the shift towards spending more on things like memory and other hardware is a temporary headwind or is it becoming a permanent problem for companies like IBM? Krishna's own explanation is that clients redirected their late July or late June capex towards servers, storage, and memory to lock in supply ahead of price hikes. Remember, we've seen Apple raise its prices recently, specifically because of memory. Same idea here. That sounds like a temporary reaction by IBM's customers to soaring memory prices. But on the other hand, Micron recently said that memory supply is going to be tight well into 2027, and we're starting to see these memory companies shift toward longer-term price-agreed service contracts. That's what scares me about this long term.
Tyler Crowe: This is what bugged me about it a little bit as well. If this was just a one-off, like things are going to get shifted maybe six or nine months down the road. Again, $700 million in sales, not the biggest thing. It seems like this is a big move for a short-term headwind. But when I see things like this, and let's all be honest here, there's a lot of institutional investors and high-frequency traders and might know a little bit more because they can pick up the phone and ask a few things. One of the things I think of is there might be more than one cockroach in the kitchen here. As we're looking forward, investors that are looking at IBM, maybe want to think like, Oh, man, maybe this is just a good time to buy some cheap shares because of what we've seen today, what else could be coming down the pipe that may assuage investors or maybe something that may signal it's an actual rough patch. What are some other things that we can look for that may be promising or signs of worse to come?
Matt Frankel: One thing we don't have yet, and Lou mentioned, this is just a preliminary report. We don't know everything. We don't have IBM's bookings yet, meaning the future revenue now is being committed to. That's been a big driver of the stock in recent quarters, especially on the AI side of the business. But judging by Krishna's generally negative tone that we've heard today, I'm not expecting the bookings number to look nearly as stellar as it did last quarter. The fact that they pre-announced is really the biggest red flag here, and that’s usually reserved for when things are especially bad.
My bottom line is that today's move makes sense. It isn't a reason to panic. To be transparent, IBM is a relatively small position in my portfolio right now. I'm planning to cautiously add to it a little bit if this price holds. The risk-reward makes a lot of sense to me, especially if you have a five-plus-year time horizon. At that San Diego event you mentioned, I talked about things like how IBM's quietly becoming the quantum computer leader as part of my thesis. But I'm going to be watching their full earnings report when it comes out on July 22, very closely. That's my birthday, and that's how much I'm paying attention to this. I'm still going to be reading it.
Lou Whiteman: I think it's important to mention just when we talk about it on sale today. Basically, the drop means we’re back to where we were in mid-May. Before people yell, go out, it's a buying opportunity. I do think that perspective is needed. The real question here, as Matt hinted at this is, is that there is a way to spin this as it's a temporary phenomena, and it will pass. There is also a way to read this as what IBM is selling isn't as important to the end customer as what they are buying. There's almost a question about, with consumers we talk about staples and discretionary. There is a way to spin this that IBM is in the discretionary bucket and not the staple bucket here. I don't know if that is the right reading, but I think that's a word of caution, and you think about this, you can't spend all the money on the world on everything. At the end of the day, corporations have to make choices. The choices they made in this quarter did not benefit IBM.
Matt Frankel: I would agree with that that IBM is more in the discretionary basket than consumer staples, especially when it comes to what we're talking here. You can hire all the AI consultants you want to. If you don't have enough memory to keep your systems going, that really doesn't matter. When it comes to what their clients are spending money on, it is more of a discretionary thing, and that's why we're seeing revenue flow during this AI cycle.
Tyler Crowe: As Lou said, let's keep this all in perspective. Over the past three years, IBM is beating the market. Over the past five years, the IBM is beating the market on a total performance basis. Like you said, it's about the same where as it was in May. It's about the same where it was in January. 2026 has not been IBM's shining year so far. But if we start pulling back the carton, things are still looking OK. We'll have to see whether or not this is a foreboding sign or maybe just a temporary road block, but we will see. Coming up next, we're going to really jump into bank earnings.
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Tyler Crowe: I was checking the earnings calendar for today, and of course, we had all the Big Banks, and then there was one other company, Fastenal, which I found funny. It was almost like one of these things is not like the other situation where it's like, we're going to talk about gigantic banks, and then an industrial parts distributor. But considering how robust and beating expectations that pretty much every bank posted, it seemed like it was the more appropriate thing to talk about than this small industrial parts manufacturer, which, maybe for another time.
Today, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup all reported earnings, and all of them reported better than expected results. I think the theme of this quarter was massive gains in equity trading. I think Goldman Sachs led the way, where they brought in $7.5 billion in equities trading this quarter alone. Now, we can say that it was stock volatility and the SpaceX IPO that resulted in some one-off gains. But are there some less discussed themes that led to all these companies posting such good results?
Matt Frankel: Yes, you're right, Tyler, that the results were generally excellent, and they're not just typical earnings beats here. JPMorgan Chase reported $7.70 in earnings per share. That's almost $2 more than expected. They beat revenue expectations by about $7 billion, not even close. It's not just investment banking. Wells Fargo, their earnings beat by a significant margin, even though they have a very small investment bank. I push back a bit when it comes to equity trading, on the one-off framing that you just said around, the volatility in the SpaceX IPO. We're seeing M&A at a level that we haven't seen since 2021. Global M&A was $3 trillion in the first half, so it wasn't just one deal or IPO. It's a general industrywide trend.
The question is how sustainable is it? But to more directly answer your question, one thing that I'm not seeing discussed that much is the net interest income side of this. Even with the Fed essentially on hold right now, the banks are generally raising their net interest income expectations. JPMorgan Chase they’re expecting $2.5 billion more in full-year net interest income than they were in April. They're seeing strong loan growth. The internal rate dynamics, meaning what they're paying on deposits versus what they're getting on loans is better than expected. There are a few other big themes, wealth management inflows across the board. Investors are putting money to work that had been on the sidelines. JP Morgan reported 44,000 "first-time investors.” Goldman's assets under management grew by 20% year over year, and the market isn't up by 20%. More importantly, credit quality is holding up better than we expected. The big banks, they're reporting lower than expected charge offs almost across the board. It shows that despite some major economic fears inflation, the Iran war, things like that, consumers and businesses are still staying pretty healthy.
Lou Whiteman: Matt did a great job breaking it down. I'll just make a couple of quick points. One, on net interest margin. Higher for longer works with banks. I'm going to just go up and scream that from the hilltops again. Financials makes so much sense to me right now. Now, where they are valued, especially in the regional banks, I think let's learn a lesson from this in terms of what the interest rate cycle means for banks. The other thing, let's just do a special shout out for Citi. Citi is usually the butt of a joke when we're discussing banks. They have a long history of screwing things up. But CEO Jane Fraser, the restructuring program seems to be working. Their hidden goals ahead of schedule. They raised the dividend by 12%, announced a 30 billion with a B share buyback program. Citi is the laggard of this group in terms of multiples. The investor takeaway here is maybe it's time to take Citi seriously. Maybe it's time to give them a look.
Tyler Crowe: Matt, to your point, saying it wasn't necessarily a one-off event, but it certainly does feel like a vibes event. Like you said, M&A activity is high, IPO activity is high. Money is moving off the sidelines to use the term, the animal spirit seems to be really hitting everybody right now, and everybody seems to be cashing in. Of course, the house tends to win, and the house, in this case, is the Big Banks. I want to drill into something a little bit more specific, though, and it was a few weeks back. The banks, all of them, went through their stress test, basically, working with regulators to figure out how much capital you need to keep on the books in the event of a credit event, a lot to do with Dodd-Frank, back after the great financial crisis, just in making sure that we don't run into the same problems we had again. Most of them passed with flying colors this time, in part because the regulatory stress test wasn’t quite as robust as it has been in years past. So much so that there were discussions at the time about accelerated buybacks and other ways of releasing capital that was on the balance sheet for safety reasons. Did that play any part in these results, and that has all these stocks doing incredibly well, or is that maybe just a later down the road story?
Lou Whiteman: It wouldn't have played a part in the results. It might be part of the enthusiasm today, although, look, the bank's got a nice boost when it was announced. I think why we're seeing the stocks moving higher, it's a simple answer. It's today's results. If one bank shows resilience, that's great for that one bank. But the across-the-board positivity, that implies that it wasn't a one-quarter fluke. It wasn't a one-time thing from anyone. There's a lot of fear in nervousness when it comes to financials right now. I think just the across-the-board success today, that should alleviate some of that nervousness.
Tyler Crowe: Coming up after the break, we're going to jump into the mailbag.
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Tyler Crowe: Hey, everyone, just a quick reminder, if you want to ask a question to us and have it read live on air, go ahead and send email us at [email protected]. That's podcast with S at fool.com. Three request as always. Keep it Foolish. Keep it short enough. I can read on air and try not to ask any individual advice, so we don't get in trouble with the SEC. We normally only do one, but we're going to do a two for today because we actually got a little bit of fan mail for Lou on this one, because somebody apparently is a big fan of you talking about T-bills either here on the podcast or in some of our live appearances that we do for members over at The Motley Fool. Lou, the question comes from Marianne and says, Lou often mentions that he parks money in T-bills. Could you give us a tutorial on how to actually buy T-bills? Lou, take it away.
Lou Whiteman: Sure. Well, first off, the argument for it is, it doesn't replace equities. But look, right now, I'm getting almost 4% on six-month bills. If that's better than most online savings accounts, so why not just chase the yield? As far as how you buy them, a couple of pointers: you can buy treasuries through the U.S. government at treasurydirect.gov, or you can do it through most brokerages. There isn't a different price or different rate, so it's really how you want to do it. I buy through Vanguard, but I know some people like to separate it out. I've heard good things about Treasury Direct. That's whatever you want to do. Actual user experience varies by brokerage.
It's very similar to buying stocks, though. You just click Buy bonds, select Treasuries instead of Corporates. You can buy existing treasuries on the open market. But what I do is I buy new issues and just hold the maturity. The most confusing thing, or the thing you might want to look at, is the way they’re priced. You buy new issues in $1,000 increments, but you don't pay face value. You pay the amount before interest. If you pay, say, 980 bucks today and get 1,000 bucks back in six months, for example, that's the most confusing part. Other than that, pretty straightforward. Again, it's just as an alternative to savings accounts when the rates are better, why not take advantage of the rate?
Tyler Crowe: Well, Marianne, I hope that answers your question. Back to the stock-related ones, we got a question from Brian, and he really went out of his way to say that he’s from corn country of Illinois and not just some other part of Illinois. Brian asks, guys, what is up with Toast? I've owned it for about two years. Stocks down quite a bit. Motley Fool podcast and not to Brian's email, but in a lot of other places women Motley Fool's extended Universe of Media. We've talked positively about Lee, and it's been used rather ubiquitously. I think it has a decent market share right now. Brian asked, restaurant parking lots usually seem full. I'm aware costs have increased, and margins are tight. Is this a lost cause stock Toast? I usually hang up stocks a couple of years. What are your current thoughts on Toast?
Matt Frankel: I'm a fan of Toast. To be fair, I'm one of the ones that you're referring to that usually speaks positively of it, so that's probably not a surprise. But the growth story here is still intact, despite any AI disruption fears. Annual recurring revenue grew by 26% in the last quarter. They added 7,000 new locations, so it's a product that's still resonating with customers. Their margins are excellent. Their operating margin not adjusted was above 20% for the first time ever in the most recent quarter. They're aggressively buying back stock, so the management clearly thinks the stock is underprice. The bear case here with all software as a service businesses like this, is that AI agents are eventually going to commoditize it and drive down users, drive down pricing power, things like that.
Toast is nicely insulated from this for a few reasons. No. 1, it owns the full stack, meaning hardware and software. The little Toast things that servers hold in their hands only work with Toast software. It has done an excellent job of building out its own AI tools. The fact that it's used in 171,000 locations right now, that's a pretty competitive advantage in an industry that has a somewhat transient workforce. If you're already trained on Toast in one restaurant, you can easily move to another restaurant, and it's a lot less friction to move jobs. There are some risk factors here to keep in mind, for sure. Memory costs, we've talked about in other segments, they're expected to be a pretty big margin headwind to Toast because they have a lot of memory needs. There's a lot of competition. Clover has more locations. Just Toast has more volume. Block’s Square is still a big part of the restaurant industry. This is still not a cheap stock. But as long as it keeps growing the top line at 20% year over year and is doing it profitably, keeps building out its ecosystem of features, I am a fan of Toast at these levels.
Lou Whiteman: I like the business better than the stock. I've never been enamored with the stock. It's just restaurants are such a tough, low-margin business. Matt mentions 171,000 locations, but from the BLS numbers, there's about over 1 million restaurant locations, so it's not a huge market share. I don't see anything in what Toast does that it might have been Forward, but I don't think there's anything that can't be copied by Clover. So many restaurants go out of business. I don't know if just getting your tools established or anchored in. I don't know if switching costs matter too much. I think this continues to be a just slugfest business, tough to gain margin, tough to gain real pricing power. Again, I like as a consumer, they've made the restaurant experience better for me. I wish them all the best, but it's just not a stock I'm interested in.
Tyler Crowe: I don't really have a horse or a dog in this fight, I guess, if you will, mixing my metaphors as always. But just throwing on the bear case cap for a second here. Matt, to your point, it is an intensely competitive space with Clover and Square. The three of them combined have hoovered up a decent amount of the space in terms of market share. Toast gains in market share up until now have garnered that 20% revenue growth or ARR growth that they have seen. The thing that I keep coming back to when I look at this is what you said was, as long as they keep that 20% revenue growth, well, that involves continuing to grow market share.
I think that the market share gains from here, where I think they're somewhere in the mid-20s percent, at least in some independent data that's been put out there, is going from that to 40% is much harder than going from 5-10% up to where it is today. There is a real possibility that revenue could slow as a result because it becomes much more of a knife fight, getting market share relative to a lot of its competitors. But it seems to be, as anyone who has either seen it or if you talk with people in the industry, they seem to really like the product, and so it has that aspect to it. Not saying that it can't do it, but it's just going to get harder from here. That's all the time we have for today. Lou, Matt, thanks for sharing thoughts. I'm going to hit disclosure, and we'll get out of here.
As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards, and it's not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provide for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. Thanks to producer Bart Shannon and the rest of The Motley Fool team for Lou, Matt, and myself. Thanks for listening, and we'll chat again soon.
The company, which has a 50% stake in a giant oil-and-gas field in Kazakhstan, spoke with U.S. officials after a Ukrainian attack hit a tanker chartered by Chevron in the Black Sea.
Most exchanges and partners have signaled readiness for the hard fork, though a few are still reviewing details and the upgrade has not yet activated.
The Stacks community approved SIP-045, the Bitcoin Staking upgrade, with more than 99% of votes cast in favor, Stacks co-creator Muneeb Ali said, setting up a hard fork targeted for around July 29 at roughly Bitcoin block 907,740.
The upgrade, formally "PoX-5: Bitcoin Staking and Emission Schedule Alignment," lets participants lock BTC in a timelocked contract on Bitcoin's base layer — under their own keys — and pair it with locked STX to earn yield paid in bitcoin. A companion proposal, SIP-044, which brings Clarity 6 and new staking post-conditions, passed alongside it. Voting opened July 6; hard-fork votes require at least 80% approval from stacked STX.
"Bitcoin is the world's most trusted asset precisely because of its design and safety principles on the L1," Ali said when the Bitcoin Staking whitepaper was published in May. "Holders can now earn yield denominated in BTC, trustlessly, while their Bitcoin stays exactly where it belongs."
How the Mechanism WorksStakers fund a timelocked UTXO on Bitcoin using OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY, pair it with an STX lock equal to at least 5% of the bond, and commit for roughly six months. The Stacks contract verifies the Bitcoin-side lock with an SPV proof — no custodian or trusted bridge. Yield comes from the BTC that miners already bid through Proof of Transfer: paired bonds get a target of about 3% APY in BTC, STX-only stackers take 85% of the excess, and 15% builds a reserve that buffers shortfalls. There is no slashing; principal returns in full when the timelock expires.
The bootstrap phase caps capacity at 3,000 BTC, managed by the Stacks Endowment with whitelisted partners and about 10% open to pools. A public testnet went live this week, and a "Genesis Bond" is targeted for late August.
SIP-045 also reverses April's emissions cut, restoring the STX coinbase to 1,000 STX per Bitcoin block from 500 — a meaningful supply increase bundled with the staking mechanism.
Yield Without Leaving BitcoinStacks has distributed more than 4,200 BTC — roughly $500 million — in stacking rewards since Proof of Transfer went live in 2021, and its sBTC bridged asset holds about $186 million, per DefiLlama, down from a Q1 peak of $545 million as BTC's price fell.
The vote result did nothing for the token. STX trades at $0.144, down 13% in 24 hours, per CoinGecko, sharply underperforming Bitcoin's 1.9% decline.
International Business Machines had its worst day in its history on July 14. So you may think that the blue chip dividend stock would drag down the Dow Jones Industrial Average, but that didn't happen. IBM has only a 2.3% weighting in the Dow, so its losses were more than offset by fellow Dow component Goldman Sachs, which has a 12.4% weighting and gained 9% that day.
This is just one of many examples when a Dow heavyweight has carried drastic underperformance from lower-weighted components. Ten of the Dow's 30 components are down year to date, but the Dow is up nearly 8% thanks to the overperformance of its top three heaviest weighted components. Goldman Sachs has the top weighting in the Dow and is up 23%, followed by Caterpillar (CAT -0.60%), which has a 10.3% weighting and is up 56%; and UnitedHealth Group, which has a 4.9% weighting and is up 30% on the year.
The price-weighted Dow index can become unbalanced if a handful of stocks surge in price without issuing stock splits. Goldman Sachs is up 190% in the last five years, and Caterpillar has done even better, jumping 330%. Combined, these two stocks make up over 22% of the Dow.
Right now, the industrials sector has the second-highest overall weighting in the Dow, representing 19% of the index. I believe there's an industrial stock that would be an ideal component to join the Dow, but it would need Caterpillar to issue a stock split first to balance the index's industrial sector weighting. That stock is GE Vernova (GEV -1.59%) -- let's see if it's a good buy now.
Image source: Getty Images.
A Caterpillar split could open the door for GE Vernova GE Vernova has some history in the Dow. It was created by the 2023 split of General Electric, which was divided into GE Vernova, GE Healthcare Technologies, and GE Aerospace. GE was one of the original members of the Dow when it was founded in 1896, but was removed in 2018.
The three independent companies have collectively produced incredible gains for investors who held the original stock. GE Vernova is up a mind-numbing 700% since its spinoff and 533% in the last two years. The rapid rise has pole-vaulted its market cap to $282 billion -- making it the third most valuable U.S. industrial company behind Caterpillar and GE Aerospace.
But Caterpillar would likely need to split its stock to make room for GE Vernova so the industrial sector isn't overweighted in the index. Caterpillar has issued stock splits in the past; its most recent split came in 2005.
And which company would be removed from the index to make room for GE Vernova? A very logical seat change could be dropping Nike, given that the athletic wear company is hovering near a 12-year low and its turnaround is taking far longer than expected. Nike has the smallest weighting in the Dow, making up only 0.48% of the index.
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GE Vernova is a candidate to split its stock as well At just over $1,000 per share at the time of this writing, GE Vernova would need to issue a stock split of its own before being added to the Dow.
If Caterpillar issued a stock split and GE Vernova replaced Nike at its current price, the Dow's industrial sector weighting would increase even more, and GE Vernova would instantly become one of the most heavily weighted components alongside Goldman Sachs. The Dow typically adds stocks only if they are priced closer to the index's median weighting or have recently split their own shares, to avoid tilting the index's balance.
For example, Alphabet issued a 20-for-1 stock split in 2022 and was added to the Dow in June of this year. If GE Vernova issued a 4-for-1 split, it would be priced right around the median of the Dow components.
This hypergrowth industrial stock deserves a seat in the Dow Given its industry-leading role in supplying industrial machinery, such as heavy-duty gas turbines, for AI data centers, GE Vernova stands out as a logical choice for adding another industrial component to the Dow.
Despite its massive run-up in recent years, GE Vernova fetches a surprisingly reasonable 30.8 price-to-earnings ratio because its earnings growth has kept up with its stock price appreciation. However, analyst consensus estimates have GE Vernova earning $30.64 in 2026 earnings per share (EPS) but just $24.48 in 2027 EPS.
Investors who believe we are still in the early innings of the AI infrastructure build-out may still want to buy GE Vernova, but it's worth noting that cyclical stocks can look cheap when their trailing earnings are in an expansion cycle, and then far more expensive as earnings compress during downturns. GE Vernova could pull back just as quickly as it ran up if there's a spending slowdown, making the stock ideally suited for risk-tolerant investors willing to endure volatility.
Daniel Foelber has positions in Nike. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Caterpillar, GE Aerospace, GE HealthCare Technologies, GE Vernova, Goldman Sachs Group, International Business Machines, and Nike. The Motley Fool recommends UnitedHealth Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
SummaryRegeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. remains a Buy, supported by robust revenue drivers Dupixent and Libtayo, despite recent share price volatility and underperformance versus the S&P.Dupixent’s expanding indications and sustained growth, along with Libtayo’s oncology momentum, underpin forward revenue expectations, even as Eylea faces biosimilar headwinds.Recent margin and ROIC declines are primarily due to accelerated Sanofi repayments and deferred tax asset accumulation, both expected to reverse, improving profitability from Q3 2026.REGN has a strong balance sheet, prudent capital allocation, and a deep pipeline that position REGN for a new growth phase, with operating margins and ROIC likely bottoming in 2026. Phimwilai Kitsuriya/E+ via Getty Images
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (REGN), based in Tarrytown, NJ, is a leading biotechnology company with a fantastic track-record of rewarding shareholders over its lifetime. However, shares have fallen from their peak of ~$1200 in August 2024 to around $660 today. The
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Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
Seeking Alpha's Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.
Strategy (MSTR -2.09%) is the largest single holder of Bitcoin on the planet. It holds almost 844,000 units of the top cryptocurrency on its balance sheet.
This has worked out well at certain times. At Bitcoin's peak last October, Strategy shares had rocketed 2,300% higher over the prior five years. But since the digital asset is currently in a bear market, Strategy's stock trades 79% below its record.
Despite the disappointing price action, the business continues to advance its efforts to integrate the leading cryptocurrency into the traditional financial services industry, further legitimizing the digital asset.
On July 13, Strategy unveiled the Bitcoin Banking Adoption Index. Here's what it might mean for Strategy shares.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Introducing a new industry benchmark The Bitcoin Banking Adoption Index is a scorecard that ranks 25 financial institutions based on how extensively they have adopted Bitcoin in their operations. Categories include trading and custody, products, margin, and leadership. Fidelity sits atop the list, with a 71% index score. Royal Bank of Canada is last, with a 13% index score. Overall, the group has a 32% rating.
On the one hand, the combined score is encouraging. It shows that well-known financial institutions are building capabilities with Bitcoin.
On the other hand, there is still a lot of work to do to get the score higher. These banking entities likely need to see tangible results, such as new customer sign-ups and higher revenue potential, before investing additional resources in Bitcoin initiatives.
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Strategy is positioned as a leader in this new arena It's impossible to know exactly what the creation of the Bitcoin Banking Adoption Index will mean for Strategy shares. But it's clear that investors hope this is the start of a major bull run. It's been difficult to watch the stock fall 79% from a record high of $473.83 in November 2024 to around $100 per share.
What this might do, however, is further solidify Strategy as the leading innovator and authority when it comes to Bitcoin integration. And it positions the business as the pioneer for establishing benchmarks and ratings that move this niche forward. Financial institutions that want to improve their index scores could even consult Strategy on best practices.
Billionaire Michael Saylor has transformed Strategy into a Bitcoin capital markets enterprise, with a suite of preferred equity and convertible debt offerings that provide different classes of investors with unique exposure to the most dominant cryptocurrency. Now that it has introduced the Bitcoin Banking Adoption Index, the company aims to boost its credibility in traditional finance.
, /PRNewswire/ -- Glancy Prongay Wolke & Rotter LLP, a leading national shareholder rights law firm, continues its investigation on behalf of Pentair plc ("Pentair" or the "Company") (NYSE:PNR) investors concerning the Company's possible violations of the federal securities laws.
IF YOU ARE AN INVESTOR WHO LOST MONEY ON PENTAIR PLC (PNR), CLICK HERE TO INQUIRE ABOUT POTENTIALLY PURSUING CLAIMS TO RECOVER YOUR LOSS.
What Happened?
On July 15, 2026, Pentair released certain second quarter 2026 financial results, disclosing among other things, a significantly lowered 2026 outlook and that "the company estimates that the destocking of inventory in the Pool channel negatively impacted Pool segment sales by approximately $170 million and Pool segment income by approximately $105 million."
The Company also announced the departure of its Chief Financial Officer, effective immediately.
On this news, Pentair's stock price fell $11.35, or 15%, to close at $64.33 per share on July 15, 2026, thereby injuring investors.
Contact Us To Participate or Learn More:
If you wish to learn more about this action, or if you have any questions concerning this announcement or your rights or interests with respect to these matters, please contact us.
Charles Linehan, Esq.,
Glancy Prongay Wolke & Rotter LLP,
1925 Century Park East, Suite 2100,
Los Angeles California 90067
Email: [email protected]
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Whistleblower Notice
Persons with non-public information regarding Pentair should consider their options to aid the investigation or take advantage of the SEC Whistleblower Program. Under the program, whistleblowers who provide original information may receive rewards totaling up to 30 percent of any successful recovery made by the SEC. For more information, call Charles H. Linehan at 310-201-9150 or 888-773-9224 or email [email protected].
About Glancy Prongay Wolke & Rotter LLP
GPWR is a premier law firm with decades of experience representing investors and consumers in securities litigation and other complex class action litigation. Recognizing the firm's recent successes, GPWR was named one of Law360's Securities Groups of the Year and ranked second-highest in total investor recoveries by Institutional Shareholder Services Securities Class Action Services in 2025. GPWR's lawyers have handled cases covering a wide spectrum of corporate misconduct and relating to nearly all industries and sectors. GPWR's past successes have been widely covered by leading news and industry publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Reuters, the Associated Press, Barron's, Investor's Business Daily, Forbes, and Money. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules.
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Los Angeles, CA 90067
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Email: [email protected]
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Toll-Free: 888-773-9224
Visit our website at: www.glancylaw.com.
Today’s the day: The Daily Delvers, our idle dungeon crawler RPG, is officially live! You can grab it on Google Play or play instantly in your browser — no download required.
Google Play: https://links.gala.com/Daily-Delvers-Android
Web: https://links.gala.com/Play-Daily-Delvers
Your hero does the fighting. You chart the path. The Daily Delvers flips the usual dungeon crawler formula. Your brave warrior auto-battles their way across a hand-built maze — tile by tile, taking on monsters, treasure chests, merchants and mysterious events all on their own. You don’t grind the buttons. You make the choices: tap to send your hero to any revealed tile, watch the battle play out, then decide where to go next.
Every coin is a decision Gold is the heartbeat of the dungeon, and there’s never quite enough of it. Every coin you loot poses the same question: do you pour it into your hero — so they can survive the depth you’re already in — or do you spend it prying open the locked doors and sealed walls that stand between you and the rest of the maze?
Every door you open reveals new corridors, tougher enemies and better rewards — and somewhere down there, a boss guards the way out. Push too far too fast, and the dungeon pushes back.
Grow a hero that’s truly yours Progression runs deep. Build around skills with real synergies, collect equipment in the Armory to enhance and merge into ever-stronger gear, and shape every run with talents that fit your playstyle. No two paths through the dungeon need to look the same.
Play your way The Daily Delvers is designed to be low-stress and idle-friendly. Check in for a short break or settle in for a long session — your hero keeps making progress even while you’re away, and a tidy offline summary catches you up when you return. All of it wrapped in a charming hand-drawn cartoon style.
Start delving Google Play: https://links.gala.com/Daily-Delvers-Android
Web: https://links.gala.com/Play-Daily-Delvers
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After Friday’s delay in the Paramount-WBD antitrust lawsuit, shares of both media companies slid in after-hours trading, foes of the merger exulted and observers tried to process the latest twist in the merger saga.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta hailed the agreement, under which Paramount pledged not close the $110 billion deal before June 1, 2027, or a legal determination of the suit’s merits, whichever comes first. The pact is “great news for audiences, movie theaters, and the many people who write, build, and create the art, news, and entertainment so many of us enjoy,” he said in a statement. “We’re eager to continue to make our case in court and celebrate another tremendous win in our effort to ensure this unlawful merger never sees the light of day.”
During a press briefing on Zoom, activists who joined the fight led by the 12 state attorneys general and the Writers Guild of America adopted a pragmatic tone.
“The power of many can beat the power of money when we organize – and this is not a done deal,” said Anjuli Kronheim Katz, executive director of the Committee for the First Amendment. “We’re not also being overly presumptive that we’re going to block this merger. It’s not a full victory, but it is an important indication of the power that we’ve built and what’s possible when we organize people. There’s a lot more to do. This is going to be hard, but it is not hopeless.”
Peter Murrieta, secretary-treasurer of the WGA West, joined the briefing from Comic-Con in San Diego to decry the deal’s potential to “push down our compensation for writers” or cut the output of films and series. (Paramount has described the merger as “pro-Hollywood” and disputes the assertion that it will have a negative impact on workers.)
Financial Sector Reacts Paramount stock touched a 52-week low on the news before closing at $8.21 and drifting down another three cents in after-hours trading. WBD shares fell almost 1% during the trading day before sagging a bit more after the session.
The financial sector was stunned by the development, which was announced with about an hour left in the trading day. Paul Nary, a management professor and M&A specialist at U. Penn’s Wharton School, posted on X that the situation will be a “more expensive adventure” given the delay. He noted the $7.2-million-per-day “ticking fee” Paramount has promised to pay WBD shareholders if the deal doesn’t close by September 30. A breakup fee of $7 billion will be owed to WBD if the deal is abandoned.
Paramount “clearly saw the writing on the wall” after the judge initially granted and then extended a temporary restraining order pausing the deal, Abiel Garcia, partner at Kesselman Brantly Stockinger, told Deadline. Standards for a TRO and a preliminary injunction – the stage that would have followed the TRO – are similar, he said, noting that the judge’s TRO order contained a few key footnotes working against Paramount. They included cautions that the David Ellison-led company could not address streaming efficiency as an argument in the case; and that monies due (the ticking fee) was not a reason to accelerate the proceedings.
Had the AGs been able to win a PI, “that’s a bad look” that would have further emboldened the states, said Garcia, who began his career at the California Department of Justice as a deputy attorney general. “I think they had to do this to try to keep themselves afloat and not lose control of the schedule.”
The AGs have said they wanted a trial date in the winter. People familiar with the case have told Paramount will likely propose a date in November.
Most experts anticipate that Paramount will appeal to the Ninth Circuit if it loses at trial, and would ultimately look to take the case to the Supreme Court. It’s not clear that the AGs would appeal.
The June 1 date in Friday’s agreement appears to reflect the fact that the WBD merger agreement technically expires on June 7 if the deal hasn’t closed. The parties would need a few days to figure that out.
Regardless of the exact timetable, the milestone effort to reshape Hollywood, a story that seemed to be reaching its end just two weeks ago will now have several more drama-filled chapters.
Girding For Battle By skipping the preliminary injunction process, Paramount is aiming to re-orient their case as it proceeds to trial. “Paramount is saying that they have all this evidence that markets don’t work the way the AGs are saying … They’re going to try and move away from traditional markets, how things have been defined before. It’s not an easy thing to do, but it’s doable. Markets evolve and change,” Garcia said.
WGA leaders noted at Friday’s presser that they’ll use the time to continue to generate support, solicit testimony and further build the case.
The ticking fee and momentum from the lawsuit‘s early traction suggest “the states will likely be in no mood to settle, at least not early on, and at least not without major concessions,” U. Penn’s Nary observed.
While the frustrations of Ellison; his father, Larry Ellison, the Oracle billionaire and deal backer; and others in the Paramount camp have taken center stage in recent days, WBD also faces a difficult path. Already preparing for its fourth corporate ownership change in the past decade, employees at the company will experience confusion and inertia in the coming months. And don’t forget, for a while they believed they were being taken over by Netflix after the streaming giant sealed a deal last December, outdueling Comcast and Paramount in the initial bidding rounds.
The company is “stuck in limbo for now,” Nary wrote. It “can’t make major changes to position themselves for survival if they believe the deal will fail, and can’t start the integration process/restructuring with $PSKY. From my perspective, I think this means WBD business may suffer either way, making it even more difficult for them to go back to being a reasonably well-positioned standalone firm if the deal doesn’t close, and also making Paramount’s already tough job of integrating, cost-cutting, and making this deal work if and when they do close even more of an uphill battle.”
Now, a deal that was hurtling through the regulatory process at a remarkable pace, going from proposal to the verge of completion in about five months, has now entered into a period of stasis. Executives from both companies are set to report their quarterly earnings over the next couple of weeks, and will certainly encounter questions about having to revise their optimistic projections about wrapping up the deal over the summer.
“The deal may still close or it may not,” Forrester Research VP Mike Proulx told the Wall Street Journal. “What we know is that the path to either outcome just got longer, messier, and likely more expensive.”
On July 24, 2026, Trimble Inc (TRMB) shares rose 5.1% today, with the stock currently priced at $52.91. The shares have seen significant volatility over the pas
The maximum Social Security benefit for a worker who claims at age 70 in 2026 lands near $61,000 per year, thanks in part to the 2.8% cost-of-living adjustment that took effect this year. That figure is the target. Replacing it with dividend income, so you either delay claiming, stop working, or supplement a smaller check, comes down to one equation: annual income divided by portfolio yield equals the capital you need. The answer looks very different at 3.5% than it does at 10%.
Here is what that math produces across three yield tiers, and what you give up at each one.
The Conservative Tier: 3% to 4% Yield At a 3.5% blended yield, you need roughly $1.74 million invested to throw off $61,000 a year. This is the dividend-growth zone: Dividend Kings, broad dividend ETFs, and quality blue chips.
Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ | JNJ Price Prediction) currently yields around 2.1% after a bump to $1.34 per quarter and 64 consecutive years of raises. Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG) pays roughly 2.9% on the back of its $1.0885 quarterly dividend. Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) sits at about 2.5% with a $0.53 quarterly payout. Blending these with a higher-yielding sleeve of broad dividend ETFs (0.35% expense ratio) gets you into the 3% to 4% range.
The tradeoff is capital intensity. You need the most money upfront. In exchange, the principal typically appreciates and the raises keep coming. JNJ has gone from $3.32 in annual dividends in 2017 to a $5.36 forward run rate today. That is real compounding.
The Moderate Tier: 5% to 7% Yield At 6%, the capital needed drops to roughly $1.02 million. This tier leans on REITs, preferred shares, covered-call equity funds, and higher-yielding financials.
KeyCorp (NYSE:KEY) is the archetype. The $0.205 quarterly dividend against a $23 share price puts the yield in the mid-3% area, but bank preferreds and covered-call ETFs built around similar names routinely land at 5% to 7%. East West Bancorp (NASDAQ:EWBC) recently raised its dividend from $0.60 to $0.80 per quarter, illustrating how mid-cap financials can lift payouts quickly.
You give up two things here: dividend growth slows, and covered-call strategies cap your upside. The income shows up. Share-price appreciation typically lags.
The Aggressive Tier: 8% to 14% Yield At 10%, the math collapses to $610,000. That is the appeal. Business development companies, mortgage REITs, leveraged covered-call funds, and high-yield bond funds all live here.
The cost is principal erosion. Distributions get cut in stress cycles, NAVs drift lower over time, and inflation grinds the income stream flat. You are, in effect, spending down the asset while it pays you.
Why the Low-Yield Portfolio Often Wins A 3.5% yield that grows 7% to 8% annually doubles the income in about nine years. JNJ, PG, and KO have compounded at roughly that pace for decades. A 10% yield with no growth pays $61,000 today and $61,000 in 2036, minus whatever inflation and distribution cuts take out. The 169% ten-year total return on JNJ is what compounding looks like when growth is stacked on top of yield.
For context, the 10-year Treasury pays 4.6%, and the national average 12-month CD sits at 1.7%. Dividend equities remain the most direct path to income replacement above those baselines.
Three Steps Before You Size the Portfolio Verify your actual annual spending against $61,000. Average U.S. household expenditures ran $78,535 in 2024, but retiree spending typically runs below working-age levels. You may need to replace less than the maximum benefit. Pull a ten-year total return chart on a dividend-growth fund and a high-yield fund side by side. The dispersion between the two curves is the price of chasing yield. Model the tax hit by bracket. Qualified dividends beat ordinary income at every level, and if you live in a high-tax state, the after-tax gap between a 3.5% qualified dividend and a 10% ordinary-income distribution widens further. The equation is fixed. The tier you pick is the actual decision.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
In the latest trading session, VICI Properties Inc. (VICI - Free Report) closed at $26.73, marking a +1.56% move from the previous day. This move outpaced the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.05%. Meanwhile, the Dow gained 0.46%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, lost 0.64%.
The company's stock has dropped by 0.79% in the past month, falling short of the Finance sector's gain of 1.74% and the S&P 500's gain of 0.61%.
Market participants will be closely following the financial results of VICI Properties Inc. in its upcoming release. The company plans to announce its earnings on July 29, 2026. The company's upcoming EPS is projected at $0.62, signifying a 3.33% increase compared to the same quarter of the previous year. Simultaneously, our latest consensus estimate expects the revenue to be $1.04 billion, showing a 4.08% escalation compared to the year-ago quarter.
For the entire fiscal year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $2.46 per share and a revenue of $4.19 billion, representing changes of +3.36% and +4.51%, respectively, from the prior year.
Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for VICI Properties Inc. These latest adjustments often mirror the shifting dynamics of short-term business patterns. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the business outlook.
Our research demonstrates that these adjustments in estimates directly associate with imminent stock price performance. To take advantage of this, we've established the Zacks Rank, an exclusive model that considers these estimated changes and delivers an operational rating system.
The Zacks Rank system, running from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), holds an admirable track record of superior performance, independently audited, with #1 stocks contributing an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Over the past month, there's been a 0.1% rise in the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate. At present, VICI Properties Inc. boasts a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).
Looking at valuation, VICI Properties Inc. is presently trading at a Forward P/E ratio of 10.69. This denotes a discount relative to the industry average Forward P/E of 13.51.
The REIT and Equity Trust - Other industry is part of the Finance sector. With its current Zacks Industry Rank of 60, this industry ranks in the top 25% of all industries, numbering over 250.
The Zacks Industry Rank evaluates the power of our distinct industry groups by determining the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks forming the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.
Remember to apply Zacks.com to follow these and more stock-moving metrics during the upcoming trading sessions.
, /PRNewswire/ -- Tom Hand and Mike Kemp, Sr. have been elected to the Alabama Power Board of Directors.
"We are pleased to welcome Tom and Mike to our board and appreciate their willingness to serve," said Alabama Power chairman, president, and CEO Jeff Peoples. "Their strategic leadership and commitment to Alabama communities will be valuable to our board."
Hand is the chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Volkert, Inc., a professional services firm that offers planning, engineering and construction services to public and private sector clients.
Hand is active in several professional organizations including the Business Council of Alabama, the Construction Industry Round Table, the Southern Association of State Highway Transportation Officials, The Beavers heavy engineering construction association, the Alabama Roadbuilders Association, Leadership Alabama, the University of South Alabama President's Cabinet and the Auburn University Engineering Alumni Council. Additionally, Hand serves on the board of directors of Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Alabama and the Regions Bank Advisory Board. He is an appointee of Governor Kay Ivey on the executive committee of Alabama's Workforce Board.
Kemp is the founder and chief executive officer of the KMS Family of Companies, delivering program management and consulting services across 16 states and serving a diverse range of industries with a focus on precision, collaboration and performance.
Kemp has been widely recognized for his leadership and impact, including honors from the Birmingham Business Journal as a Top 40 Under 40, Best in Minority Business Awards recipient and Top 40 Under 40 of the Decade. He was also a recipient of the 2025 CEO Award and a graduate of Leadership Birmingham and Leadership Alabama. Additionally, Kemp serves on the board of directors of First Horizon Bank, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Alabama and is a leader with many professional organizations, including the Business Council of Alabama, Economic Development Partnership of Alabama, United Way of Central Alabama and Leadership Alabama.
The addition of these leaders to the Alabama Power Board of Directors reflects the company's continued commitment to create value for our customers, communities and shareholders.
About Alabama Power
Alabama Power, a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Company (NYSE: SO), provides reliable electricity to 1.6 million customers across the state. Learn more at AlabamaPower.com.
, /PRNewswire/ -- Markel Group Inc. (NYSE: MKL) announced today it will hold a conference call on Thursday, July 30, 2026 beginning at 9:30 a.m. (Eastern Time) to discuss quarterly results and business developments.
Investors, analysts and the general public may listen to the call via live webcast at ir.mklgroup.com. The call may be accessed telephonically by dialing (833) 461-5787 in the U.S., or +44 808 196 8935 internationally, and providing Meeting ID: 322 635 047. A replay of the call will be available on our website approximately one hour after the conclusion of the call.
The webcast, the conference call and the content and permitted replays or rebroadcasts thereof are the exclusive copyrighted property of Markel Group Inc. and may not be copied, taped, rebroadcast, or published in whole or in part without the express written consent of Markel Group Inc.
About Markel Group
Markel Group Inc. (NYSE: MKL) is a diverse family of companies that includes everything from insurance to bakery equipment, building supplies, houseplants, and more. The leadership teams of these businesses operate with a high degree of independence, while at the same time living the values that we call the Markel Style. Our specialty insurance business sits at the core of our company. Through decades of sound underwriting, the Markel Insurance team has provided the capital base from which we built a system of businesses and investments that collectively increase Markel Group's durability and adaptability. It's a system that provides diverse income streams, access to a wide range of investment opportunities, and the ability to efficiently move capital to the best ideas across the company. Most importantly though, this system enables each of our businesses to advance our shared goal of helping our customers, associates, and shareholders win over the long term. Visit mklgroup.com to learn more.
On July 24, 2026, Generac Holdings Inc (GNRC) shares fell 4.0% to $202.01, reflecting a significant decline of 28.9% over the past month. The stock has experien
On July 24, 2026, Insulet Corp (PODD) shares rose 3.1% to $163.26. This movement comes amid a challenging year for the company, with shares down 42.6% year-to-d
On July 24, 2026, Tyler Technologies Inc (TYL) shares rose 3.1% to a current price of $297.15. The stock is trading within a 52-week range of $270.71 to $621.34
This week was one to forget for Tyler Technologies (TYL +3.12%) and its investors. The dynamic in tech stocks was a shift out of software titles and into companies active in the artificial intelligence (AI) hardware space.
Although Tyler is somewhat insulated from such potential disruption, its shares took quite a hit anyway. They fell by nearly 10% across the week, according to data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Spending shifts In recent weeks, major tech companies have indicated that they aim to spend significant amounts of capital on AI hardware. This implies that the proportion of IT budgets will shift, perhaps meaningfully, from software to hardware -- hence that mirroring trend with tech investors.
Image source: Getty Images
Concerns about this grew significantly on Wednesday, when tech sector giant Alphabet reported its second-quarter earnings. The company did well during the quarter, as it frequently does, yet many investors were worried about management's pronouncements regarding capital expenditures.
The company increased its estimate for full-year 2026 capex to $195 billion to $205 billion, from $180 billion to $190 billion. And that's just the beginning -- it added that next year's spending will be much higher, although it didn't provide an estimate. Like other companies reporting recently, Alphabet cited the need to devote considerable capital to AI hardware.
Today's Change
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Public sector to the rescue? Tyler wasn't as badly affected by this as other software companies, as its client list consists entirely of public-sector entities. Since these tend to be less flexible about their budgets, if they're going to shift from spending on software to hardware, that change is likely to be gradual instead of sudden.
Personally, I wouldn't worry about Tyler getting hammered by this trend. It's done well servicing its niche, and its solutions are trusted and widely used throughout the public sector. I think the stock is now a juicy buy-on-weakness opportunity.
Eric Volkman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Tyler Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
In the latest trading session, Griffon (GFF - Free Report) closed at $90.62, marking a +1.92% move from the previous day. This move outpaced the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.05%. At the same time, the Dow added 0.46%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 0.64%.
Prior to today's trading, shares of the garage door and building products maker had lost 7.31% was narrower than the Conglomerates sector's loss of 19.14% and lagged the S&P 500's gain of 0.61%.
The investment community will be paying close attention to the earnings performance of Griffon in its upcoming release. The company's upcoming EPS is projected at $1.33, signifying a 11.33% drop compared to the same quarter of the previous year. Meanwhile, the latest consensus estimate predicts the revenue to be $453.9 million, indicating a 26.03% decrease compared to the same quarter of the previous year.
Looking at the full year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of $5.17 per share and revenue of $1.81 billion. These totals would mark changes of -8.5% and -28.24%, respectively, from last year.
Any recent changes to analyst estimates for Griffon should also be noted by investors. Such recent modifications usually signify the changing landscape of near-term business trends. As such, positive estimate revisions reflect analyst optimism about the business and profitability.
Our research reveals that these estimate alterations are directly linked with the stock price performance in the near future. To benefit from this, we have developed the Zacks Rank, a proprietary model which takes these estimate changes into account and provides an actionable rating system.
The Zacks Rank system, which ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), has an impressive outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks generating an average annual return of +25% since 1988. The Zacks Consensus EPS estimate remained stagnant within the past month. At present, Griffon boasts a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).
Investors should also note Griffon's current valuation metrics, including its Forward P/E ratio of 17.21. This signifies a premium in comparison to the average Forward P/E of 13.52 for its industry.
The Diversified Operations industry is part of the Conglomerates sector. Currently, this industry holds a Zacks Industry Rank of 154, positioning it in the bottom 38% of all 250+ industries.
The Zacks Industry Rank is ordered from best to worst in terms of the average Zacks Rank of the individual companies within each of these sectors. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.
Keep in mind to rely on Zacks.com to watch all these stock-impacting metrics, and more, in the succeeding trading sessions.
Axcelis Technologies (ACLS - Free Report) ended the recent trading session at $134.10, demonstrating a -5.24% change from the preceding day's closing price. The stock trailed the S&P 500, which registered a daily gain of 0.05%. Elsewhere, the Dow saw an upswing of 0.46%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq depreciated by 0.64%.
The semiconductor services company's shares have seen a decrease of 21.69% over the last month, not keeping up with the Computer and Technology sector's loss of 3.62% and the S&P 500's gain of 0.61%.
Analysts and investors alike will be keeping a close eye on the performance of Axcelis Technologies in its upcoming earnings disclosure. The company's earnings report is set to go public on August 6, 2026. The company is predicted to post an EPS of $0.9, indicating a 20.35% decline compared to the equivalent quarter last year. Our most recent consensus estimate is calling for quarterly revenue of $205.1 million, up 5.43% from the year-ago period.
Regarding the entire year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates forecast earnings of $3.82 per share and revenue of $845.4 million, indicating changes of -21.72% and +0.76%, respectively, compared to the previous year.
Investors should also note any recent changes to analyst estimates for Axcelis Technologies. Such recent modifications usually signify the changing landscape of near-term business trends. Consequently, upward revisions in estimates express analysts' positivity towards the business operations and its ability to generate profits.
Empirical research indicates that these revisions in estimates have a direct correlation with impending stock price performance. To utilize this, we have created the Zacks Rank, a proprietary model that integrates these estimate changes and provides a functional rating system.
The Zacks Rank system ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell). It has a remarkable, outside-audited track record of success, with #1 stocks delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection remained stagnant. At present, Axcelis Technologies boasts a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).
In the context of valuation, Axcelis Technologies is at present trading with a Forward P/E ratio of 37.08. This valuation marks a discount compared to its industry average Forward P/E of 38.98.
Investors should also note that ACLS has a PEG ratio of 8.43 right now. This metric is used similarly to the famous P/E ratio, but the PEG ratio also takes into account the stock's expected earnings growth rate. As of the close of trade yesterday, the Electronics - Manufacturing Machinery industry held an average PEG ratio of 4.8.
The Electronics - Manufacturing Machinery industry is part of the Computer and Technology sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 30, which puts it in the top 13% of all 250+ industries.
The Zacks Industry Rank is ordered from best to worst in terms of the average Zacks Rank of the individual companies within each of these sectors. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.
Be sure to use Zacks.com to monitor all these stock-influencing metrics, and more, throughout the forthcoming trading sessions.
On July 24, 2026, Crane Co (CR) shares rose 3.7% to a current price of $226.14. This movement is notable within a 52-week range of $159.58 to $226.99, reflectin
Insiders may stand to receive substantial financial benefits not available to ordinary shareholders.
The proposed transactions may contain terms that could limit superior competing offers.
Shareholders are encouraged to contact the firm to discuss their rights and options at no cost or obligation. We would handle any matter on a contingent fee basis, whereby you would not be responsible for out-of-pocket payment of our legal fees or expenses.
, /PRNewswire/ -- Halper Sadeh LLC, an investor rights law firm, is investigating the following companies for potential violations of the federal securities laws and/or breaches of fiduciary duties to shareholders relating to:
Twin Vee PowerCats Co. (NASDAQ: VEEE)'s merger with USFM Corporation. If you are a Twin Vee shareholder, click here to learn more about your legal rights and options.
NextCure, Inc. (NASDAQ: NXTC)'s merger with Avere Therapeutics, Inc. Upon closing of the proposed transaction, NextCure shareholders are expected to own approximately 1.21% of the combined company. If you are a NextCure shareholder, click here to learn more about your rights and options.
TriCo Bancshares (NASDAQ: TCBK)'s sale to First Hawaiian, Inc. for 2.095 First Hawaiian shares for each TriCo share. Upon closing of the proposed transaction, TriCo shareholders are expected to own approximately 35% of the combined company. If you are a TriCo shareholder, click here to learn more about your rights and options.
First Hawaiian, Inc. (NASDAQ: FHB)'s merger with TriCo Bancshares. Upon closing of the proposed transaction, First Hawaiian shareholders are expected to own approximately 65% of the combined company. If you are a First Hawaiian shareholder, click here to learn more about your legal rights and options.
On behalf of shareholders, Halper Sadeh LLC may seek increased consideration, additional disclosures and information, or other relief and benefits.
Halper Sadeh LLC represents investors all over the world who have fallen victim to securities fraud and corporate misconduct. Our attorneys have been instrumental in implementing corporate reforms and recovering millions of dollars on behalf of defrauded investors.
Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
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The Hartford Insurance Group, Inc. gets a Buy rating after recent Q2 results. Key positives are top line growth and business insurance showing strong trends, the dividend case remaining compelling, and the investment-grade A-level credit rating. Challenges included limited near-term upside, sector competition, and the exposure to catastrophe losses.
For the quarter ended June 2026, Kinder Morgan (KMI - Free Report) reported revenue of $4.48 billion, up 10.8% over the same period last year. EPS came in at $0.37, compared to $0.28 in the year-ago quarter.
The reported revenue compares to the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $4.29 billion, representing a surprise of +4.33%. The company delivered an EPS surprise of +19.36%, with the consensus EPS estimate being $0.31.
While investors scrutinize revenue and earnings changes year-over-year and how they compare with Wall Street expectations to determine their next move, some key metrics always offer a more accurate picture of a company's financial health.
Since these metrics play a crucial role in driving the top- and bottom-line numbers, comparing them with the year-ago numbers and what analysts estimated about them helps investors better project a stock's price performance.
Here is how Kinder Morgan performed in the just reported quarter in terms of the metrics most widely monitored and projected by Wall Street analysts:
Realized weighted average oil price: $/73.78 versus the two-analyst average estimate of $/72.56.Realized weighted average NGL price: $/33.38 versus the two-analyst average estimate of $/35.64.Terminals - Liquids leasable capacity: 78.60 MMBBL versus the two-analyst average estimate of 78.65 MMBBL.NGL sales volumes - net: 9.8 millions of barrels of oil compared to the 9.73 millions of barrels of oil average estimate based on two analysts.CO2 sales volumes - net: 0.31 Bcf/D versus the two-analyst average estimate of 0.31 Bcf/D.Total oil production - net: 28.04 millions of barrels of oil versus 26.25 millions of barrels of oil estimated by two analysts on average.Terminals - Bulk transload tonnage: 12.90 MMTon versus 12.25 MMTon estimated by two analysts on average.Segment EBDA- Natural gas Pipelines: $1.52 billion versus $1.43 billion estimated by two analysts on average.Segment EBDA- Terminals: $310 million compared to the $293.64 million average estimate based on two analysts.Segment EBDA- Products Pipelines: $343 million versus $305.31 million estimated by two analysts on average.Segment EBDA- CO2: $226 million versus $189.27 million estimated by two analysts on average.View all Key Company Metrics for Kinder Morgan here>>>
Shares of Kinder Morgan have returned -0.7% over the past month versus the Zacks S&P 500 composite's +0.6% change. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), indicating that it could perform in line with the broader market in the near term.
In the latest trading session, Marvell Technology (MRVL - Free Report) closed at $194.29, marking a -7.18% move from the previous day. The stock's change was less than the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.05%. On the other hand, the Dow registered a gain of 0.46%, and the technology-centric Nasdaq decreased by 0.64%.
Prior to today's trading, shares of the chipmaker had lost 25.58% lagged the Computer and Technology sector's loss of 3.62% and the S&P 500's gain of 0.61%.
Market participants will be closely following the financial results of Marvell Technology in its upcoming release. The company's earnings per share (EPS) are projected to be $0.93, reflecting a 38.81% increase from the same quarter last year. Simultaneously, our latest consensus estimate expects the revenue to be $2.71 billion, showing a 35.15% escalation compared to the year-ago quarter.
For the full year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $4.04 per share and revenue of $11.55 billion, which would represent changes of +42.25% and +40.91%, respectively, from the prior year.
Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for Marvell Technology. Such recent modifications usually signify the changing landscape of near-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the business outlook.
Our research suggests that these changes in estimates have a direct relationship with upcoming stock price performance. To benefit from this, we have developed the Zacks Rank, a proprietary model which takes these estimate changes into account and provides an actionable rating system.
The Zacks Rank system, which varies between #1 (Strong Buy) and #5 (Strong Sell), carries an impressive track record of exceeding expectations, confirmed by external audits, with stocks at #1 delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Over the last 30 days, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has witnessed a 0.13% decrease. Marvell Technology currently has a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).
Looking at valuation, Marvell Technology is presently trading at a Forward P/E ratio of 51.79. This expresses a premium compared to the average Forward P/E of 46.38 of its industry.
We can also see that MRVL currently has a PEG ratio of 0.99. This popular metric is similar to the widely-known P/E ratio, with the difference being that the PEG ratio also takes into account the company's expected earnings growth rate. The Electronics - Semiconductors industry had an average PEG ratio of 1.74 as trading concluded yesterday.
The Electronics - Semiconductors industry is part of the Computer and Technology sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 57, putting it in the top 24% of all 250+ industries.
The Zacks Industry Rank assesses the strength of our separate industry groups by calculating the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks contained within the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.
Keep in mind to rely on Zacks.com to watch all these stock-impacting metrics, and more, in the succeeding trading sessions.
Copart, Inc. (CPRT - Free Report) closed the most recent trading day at $27.94, moving +2.72% from the previous trading session. The stock outperformed the S&P 500, which registered a daily gain of 0.05%. At the same time, the Dow added 0.46%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 0.64%.
Coming into today, shares of the company had lost 9.48% in the past month. In that same time, the Business Services sector gained 3.24%, while the S&P 500 gained 0.61%.
Investors will be eagerly watching for the performance of Copart, Inc. in its upcoming earnings disclosure. The company's earnings per share (EPS) are projected to be $0.39, reflecting a 4.88% decrease from the same quarter last year. Meanwhile, the latest consensus estimate predicts the revenue to be $1.14 billion, indicating a 1.23% increase compared to the same quarter of the previous year.
For the entire fiscal year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $1.58 per share and a revenue of $4.63 billion, representing changes of -0.63% and -0.37%, respectively, from the prior year.
It is also important to note the recent changes to analyst estimates for Copart, Inc. These revisions typically reflect the latest short-term business trends, which can change frequently. With this in mind, we can consider positive estimate revisions a sign of optimism about the business outlook.
Our research shows that these estimate changes are directly correlated with near-term stock prices. Investors can capitalize on this by using the Zacks Rank. This model considers these estimate changes and provides a simple, actionable rating system.
The Zacks Rank system, running from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), holds an admirable track record of superior performance, independently audited, with #1 stocks contributing an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has shifted 0.13% downward. As of now, Copart, Inc. holds a Zacks Rank of #4 (Sell).
Investors should also note Copart, Inc.'s current valuation metrics, including its Forward P/E ratio of 17.19. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 25.49, which means Copart, Inc. is trading at a discount to the group.
The Auction and Valuation Services industry is part of the Business Services sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 209, putting it in the bottom 16% of all 250+ industries.
The Zacks Industry Rank is ordered from best to worst in terms of the average Zacks Rank of the individual companies within each of these sectors. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.
You can find more information on all of these metrics, and much more, on Zacks.com.
On July 24, 2026, Lululemon Athletica Inc (LULU) shares rose 3.3% to a current price of $114.28. Despite today's gain, the stock has seen a dramatic decline of
Hershey (HSY - Free Report) closed at $174.30 in the latest trading session, marking a +1.25% move from the prior day. The stock's performance was ahead of the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.05%. Meanwhile, the Dow gained 0.46%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, lost 0.64%.
Shares of the chocolate bar and candy maker have depreciated by 2.57% over the course of the past month, underperforming the Consumer Staples sector's loss of 0.06%, and the S&P 500's gain of 0.61%.
The investment community will be paying close attention to the earnings performance of Hershey in its upcoming release. The company is slated to reveal its earnings on July 30, 2026. The company is forecasted to report an EPS of $1.45, showcasing a 19.83% upward movement from the corresponding quarter of the prior year. Meanwhile, our latest consensus estimate is calling for revenue of $2.65 billion, up 1.32% from the prior-year quarter.
In terms of the entire fiscal year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates predict earnings of $8.42 per share and a revenue of $12.24 billion, indicating changes of +33.44% and +4.72%, respectively, from the former year.
Additionally, investors should keep an eye on any recent revisions to analyst forecasts for Hershey. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest near-term business trends. Hence, positive alterations in estimates signify analyst optimism regarding the business and profitability.
Based on our research, we believe these estimate revisions are directly related to near-term stock moves. We developed the Zacks Rank to capitalize on this phenomenon. Our system takes these estimate changes into account and delivers a clear, actionable rating model.
The Zacks Rank system, which ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), has an impressive outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks generating an average annual return of +25% since 1988. The Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 0.39% lower within the past month. Hershey is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).
In terms of valuation, Hershey is presently being traded at a Forward P/E ratio of 20.45. This indicates a premium in contrast to its industry's Forward P/E of 20.15.
It is also worth noting that HSY currently has a PEG ratio of 1.07. The PEG ratio is similar to the widely-used P/E ratio, but this metric also takes the company's expected earnings growth rate into account. The Food - Confectionery industry currently had an average PEG ratio of 1.07 as of yesterday's close.
The Food - Confectionery industry is part of the Consumer Staples sector. With its current Zacks Industry Rank of 225, this industry ranks in the bottom 9% of all industries, numbering over 250.
The Zacks Industry Rank evaluates the power of our distinct industry groups by determining the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks forming the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.
Ensure to harness Zacks.com to stay updated with all these stock-shifting metrics, among others, in the next trading sessions.
In the latest trading session, ATI (ATI - Free Report) closed at $197.80, marking a -1.02% move from the previous day. This move lagged the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.05%. On the other hand, the Dow registered a gain of 0.46%, and the technology-centric Nasdaq decreased by 0.64%.
Shares of the maker of steel and specialty metals witnessed a gain of 0.17% over the previous month, beating the performance of the Aerospace sector with its loss of 1.06%, and underperforming the S&P 500's gain of 0.61%.
Analysts and investors alike will be keeping a close eye on the performance of ATI in its upcoming earnings disclosure. The company's earnings report is set to go public on August 6, 2026. It is anticipated that the company will report an EPS of $1.03, marking a 39.19% rise compared to the same quarter of the previous year. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $1.22 billion, up 6.98% from the year-ago period.
For the annual period, the Zacks Consensus Estimates anticipate earnings of $4.49 per share and a revenue of $4.97 billion, signifying shifts of +38.58% and +8.4%, respectively, from the last year.
It's also important for investors to be aware of any recent modifications to analyst estimates for ATI. Such recent modifications usually signify the changing landscape of near-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the business outlook.
Our research demonstrates that these adjustments in estimates directly associate with imminent stock price performance. To exploit this, we've formed the Zacks Rank, a quantitative model that includes these estimate changes and presents a viable rating system.
The Zacks Rank system, ranging from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), possesses a remarkable history of outdoing, externally audited, with #1 stocks returning an average annual gain of +25% since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has shifted 1.27% upward. ATI currently has a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy).
From a valuation perspective, ATI is currently exchanging hands at a Forward P/E ratio of 44.53. This denotes a premium relative to the industry average Forward P/E of 37.1.
Investors should also note that ATI has a PEG ratio of 1.59 right now. This popular metric is similar to the widely-known P/E ratio, with the difference being that the PEG ratio also takes into account the company's expected earnings growth rate. ATI's industry had an average PEG ratio of 2.32 as of yesterday's close.
The Aerospace - Defense Equipment industry is part of the Aerospace sector. At present, this industry carries a Zacks Industry Rank of 68, placing it within the top 28% of over 250 industries.
The Zacks Industry Rank assesses the vigor of our specific industry groups by computing the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks incorporated in the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.
Keep in mind to rely on Zacks.com to watch all these stock-impacting metrics, and more, in the succeeding trading sessions.
