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XRP Ledger activity has staged a sharp comeback, with payment volume surging 386% over the latest 24-hour period. The rebound brings daily payment volume to approximately 583.3 million XRP, suggesting that network activity is recovering rapidly after a particularly weak reading.

Payments volume in the normal rangeAccording to XRP Ledger data, the current figure remains slightly below the 30-day average of roughly 638 million XRP. A 386% daily increase looks enormous primarily because activity rebounded from an unusually low base. Still, the recovery puts payment volume much closer to its recent normal range.

Source: XRP LedgerThe one-year chart also shows how volatile this metric can be. XRP Ledger has repeatedly recorded daily payment volumes above one billion XRP, with several spikes exceeding two billion. The all-time high stands near seven billion XRP. Consequently, the latest 583 million reading does not represent an exceptional level historically, but the speed of the rebound is notable.

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The next question is whether the recovery can persist. A sustained move above the 638 million 30-day average would provide stronger evidence that transactional activity is accelerating rather than simply normalizing after a weak session. Returning above one billion XRP would make the change considerably more significant.

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Meanwhile, XRP's price is holding relatively firm at approximately $1.51. The asset continues consolidating following September's breakout, when it surged from around $1.30 toward $1.60. Recent price action has formed a relatively narrow range around $1.48–$1.53, despite several failed attempts to resume the rally.

XRP is in comfort zoneTechnically, XRP is doing just fine. XRP trades above its rising short-term moving average around $1.45 and comfortably above the major longer-term averages concentrated around $1.35–$1.40. RSI remains in neutral-to-bullish territory rather than signaling an overheated market.

For another expansion, XRP needs to reclaim approximately $1.55 before challenging the major $1.60–$1.65 resistance region. Conversely, losing $1.45 would materially weaken the current setup.

The 386% payment-volume recovery therefore adds a positive on-chain signal, but one day does not establish a trend. Sustained volumes above the 30-day average would provide much stronger confirmation that XRP Ledger activity is genuinely gaining pace.

TLDR On October 2, the SEC greenlit six triple-leveraged ETFs tracking Bitcoin, Ethereum, gold, silver, oil, and natural gas. The cryptocurrency products will gain exposure through regulated futures rather than direct coin holdings. Trading cannot commence until Volatility Shares receives effective S-1 registration statements. The issuer has not yet disclosed a launch timeline for the new products. Daily rebalancing means returns may diverge significantly from three times the longer-term asset movement. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has approved the nation’s first triple-leveraged exchange-traded funds offering exposure to Bitcoin and Ethereum. The regulatory green light came on October 2, 2026, following a rule modification filed with Cboe BZX.

🚨JUST IN: The SEC just APPROVED a rule change allowing 3x leveraged ETFs tied to Bitcoin, Ethereum, gold, silver, crude oil and natural gas from Volatility Shares.

The funds would use regulated FUTURES rather than holding the underlying assets directly.

They are NOT trading… pic.twitter.com/SMiqRONgV4

— Coin Bureau (@coinbureau) October 5, 2026

The approval enables Volatility Shares to bring six new 3x leveraged products to market. These offerings will track Bitcoin, Ethereum, gold, silver, crude oil, and natural gas.

The Bitcoin-linked product is anticipated to list under ticker symbol BITH, while the Ethereum-tracking fund will likely trade as ETHK.

How the Funds Will Work Both cryptocurrency funds will avoid direct ownership of digital coins. Instead, they’ll employ regulated futures instruments, including CME-linked contracts, to deliver approximately three times the daily percentage change of Bitcoin or Ethereum.

If the futures benchmark rises 1% in a single day, the fund should gain roughly 3%, excluding fees and expenses. Conversely, a 1% decline would translate to approximately a 3% loss.

Each fund rebalances its leverage at the close of every trading session. This daily reset mechanism is a defining characteristic of leveraged exchange-traded products.

Due to this rebalancing structure, the products are engineered to deliver triple the daily return exclusively. They’re not intended to replicate three times the performance over weekly, monthly, or annual periods.

Volatility Shares currently operates BITX, a 2x Bitcoin fund. The firm brings existing expertise in managing leveraged cryptocurrency strategies to these newly approved offerings.

Waiting on Registration Before Trading Begins Despite the SEC’s rule change approval, these funds remain unavailable for trading. Volatility Shares must still obtain effectiveness on its Form S-1 registration documents.

No confirmed timeline exists for this final regulatory step. The issuer has not publicly announced when either fund will become available to investors.

Market observers have highlighted risks associated with the long-term performance characteristics of these instruments. Daily rebalancing can produce counterintuitive results: a cryptocurrency that rises and then falls by equal percentages may still generate outsized losses for the leveraged fund compared to the underlying asset.

As an illustration, if Bitcoin climbs 10% and subsequently drops 10%, Bitcoin itself would decline roughly 1%. A triple-leveraged fund tracking these movements could fall approximately 9% due to compounding effects from daily resets.

A single-day plunge of approximately 33% in the underlying futures contracts could theoretically eliminate the fund’s entire net asset value. This vulnerability explains why these instruments are typically marketed toward short-term traders who monitor positions actively.

Other asset managers have pursued similar triple-leveraged cryptocurrency products. GraniteShares filed for 3x XRP funds earlier in 2026 but encountered regulatory obstacles.

This approval represents one element of expanded regulatory engagement with digital asset products throughout the United States this year. The SEC has also published guidance addressing staking receipt tokens and various digital asset frameworks.

Regulators have been examining rules governing adviser custody of cryptocurrencies and tokenized securities offerings. Submissions from OKX and ICE concerning tokenized NYSE equity shares have progressed under an SEC innovation pilot program.

In parallel developments, the Treasury Department has reversed course on earlier proposals to regulate crypto mixing services. The SEC has also explored potential innovation exemptions for tokenized securities issuances.

Currently, both the 3x Bitcoin and 3x Ethereum funds remain inaccessible to retail and institutional investors. Trading will only commence once registration statements receive formal effectiveness declarations.

Prysm’s v7.2.1 release sets its validators to Sepolia’s new 200 million gas limit by default, a number its previous version left at 60 million unless operators changed it by hand.

Prysm ships 200M gas limit fix hours before Glamsterdam test

Posted October 6, 2026 at 6:00 am ET.

Offchain Labs, which maintains the Prysm Ethereum consensus client, released version 7.2.1 on Monday, hours before the Glamsterdam upgrade goes live on the Sepolia testnet. With the update, Prysm validators default to a 200 million gas limit once the fork activates, rather than the 60 million the prior release used unless operators set a higher number themselves.

Glamsterdam is scheduled to activate on Sepolia at epoch 353,024, or 13:53:36 UTC on Oct. 6, according to the Ethereum Foundation’s testnet announcement. Sepolia is a test network where developers try out protocol changes before they reach mainnet. Its shared configuration was updated on Sept. 24 to lift the gas limit to 200 million at the fork.

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A Late Config Change That schedule, set under EIP-8261, arrived after Prysm had already cut v7.2.0, the version the foundation listed as Sepolia-ready. Validators on v7.2.0 would “default to a 60M gas limit in their Gloas proposer preferences,” its release notes warned, and anyone who wanted 200 million had to configure it manually. The team said a follow-up release would carry the schedule.

Version 7.2.1 is that release. For validators running it, the higher limit “needs no action,” per the notes. Operators who still set a gas limit flag from older setups will override the 200 million schedule, though, and the client now warns them about it at startup.

Gas is how Ethereum measures the computing work a block can hold. A higher limit makes room for more transactions per block but puts more load on the machines running nodes. At 200 million, Sepolia’s limit will be more than three times the old 60 million default.

The release also switches on partial data columns by default, so nodes can trade individual cells of blob data instead of entire columns, and patches a bug in how Prysm builds the first post-fork block in some cases.

Teku Still Defaults to 60M Prysm was one of two consensus clients the foundation flagged for the lower default. The foundation said in the same announcement that Teku 26.9.1 “defaults to a 60M gas limit after activation” and that Teku validators who want 200 million must set it with a command-line flag. As of Tuesday morning, 26.9.1 was still Teku’s newest release on GitHub.

Glamsterdam bundles two sets of changes, Gloas on the consensus side and Amsterdam on the execution side. Most notable are enshrined proposer-builder separation (ePBS), which writes the handoff between validators and block builders into the protocol, and block-level access lists, which let nodes process transactions in parallel. Vitalik Buterin has argued that ePBS alone does not stop a small group of builders from gaining outsized power.

“Hoodi and mainnet activation dates have not yet been decided,” the foundation said.

Related Listen: The Chopping Block: Bitget’s 388 Million Dollar Hack, Kalshi’s Cooked Perps Volume, and Agentic Bank Runs

AI-assisted content: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by a member of the Unchained editorial team before publication.

Dogecoin (DOGE) price has created a golden cross on the one-day chart, with the move coinciding with a jump in open interest (OI) to $1.52 billion.

Analysts are also anticipating the beginning of another bullish leg despite reduced demand for DOGE ETFs.

Dogecoin price trades at $0.094 today, October 6, after dropping by 2% in 24 hours.

Analysts Forecast a Major Dogecoin Price Breakout In a recent X post, analyst Ali Martinez noted that DOGE price is headed for a breakout after consolidating within a descending triangle.

Per the analyst, if Dogecoin can close above the obstacle at $0.095, it could confirm a bullish breakout that could stir gains to $0.106.

Another analyst dubbed Sweeped on X also observed the same descending triangle on Dogecoin’s four-hour chart, noting the top meme coin could become one of the earliest altcoins to “pump” in Q4 2026.

Analyst TMA also observes that Dogecoin is repeating a 2024 bull fractal that could precede an over five times gain.

“$DOGE is moving up from a multi-year support zone and has broken above a multi-year downtrend line. DOGE pumped more than 500% from this level in 2024,” the analyst said.

The bullish future Dogecoin outlook by the analysts comes as the crypto “fear and greed index remains in “greed” territory even as Bitcoin price eyes the resistance at $85,000.

Open Interest Spikes Amid Reduced ETF Demand Data from CoinGlass shows that Dogecoin’s OI reading has increased slightly by 0.55% to $1.52 billion. The open interest is now at its highest since September 28, despite the price of Dogecoin dropping by 2%.

DOGE OI (Source: CoinGlass) The high OI coincides with a decline in the long/short reading to 0.89, suggesting that short accounts are outpacing the long accounts.

The increased demand for short positions also comes as demand for Dogecoin ETFs wanes. As CoinGape reported earlier, Dogecoin ETFs recently reached record weekly inflows in the week ending September 25.

However, since then, the demand has weakened, with the ETF recording inflows of only $327,000 last week, and zero inflows so far this week, per SoSoValue data.

Dogecoin Price Prediction as Golden Cross Emerges Dogecoin price has formed a golden cross on the one-day chart after the 50-day SMA moved above the 200-day SMA.

The golden cross usually signals a shift in sentiment from bearish to bullish. However, the last time that Dogecoin created a golden cross in August 2025, the price did not surge right away. Instead, the price dropped and later surged by 42% one month after the crossover appeared.

The RSI reading of 55 shows the momentum remains bullish despite today’s dip.

Still, Dogecoin price needs to close above the resistance at $0.097 to confirm a move towards the September high of $0.105.

DOGE/USDT 1D Chart (Source: TradingView) A surge in selling pressure could push Dogecoin price to the support at $0.092. If Dogecoin fails to hold that support, it could move to the 50-day SMA of $0.088.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has renewed his campaign urging Gemini, the major US-based cryptocurrency exchange, to list Cardano’s ADA token. The appeal followed Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss marking the exchange’s 11th anniversary with a celebratory message on X, where Hoskinson directly replied, “List ADA.”

Gemini’s asset listing policy under scrutinyGemini has added support for an extensive range of cryptocurrencies over the years, including assets such as Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX), Polkadot (DOT), Cosmos (ATOM), and Tezos (XTZ). Despite this expansion, Cardano’s native asset ADA remains conspicuously absent from the exchange’s trading options.

Gemini’s official listing policy states that the exchange evaluates assets for potential inclusion based on criteria including maturity, liquidity, market demand, utility, regulatory environment, cybersecurity risks, and control concentration. However, Gemini has never publicly addressed its reasoning around ADA or commented on its absence.

Many Cardano supporters have questioned why one of the largest proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies has not been listed on Gemini, particularly as the exchange has embraced other leading tokens in the same category.

Hoskinson’s persistent campaignCharles Hoskinson has spent years publicly campaigning for ADA’s inclusion. In December 2022, during a period when Gemini was facing challenges involving crypto lender Genesis, Hoskinson remarked that the failure to list ADA appeared “pretty tightly correlated” with bankruptcy or reckless risk-taking. At the time, FTX’s collapse also drew attention, as that exchange had never launched an ADA spot market either.

Later that month, during a Twitter Spaces session, Hoskinson expanded on his point:

“We are still not on Gemini. Turns out that’s probably a good thing because FTX didn’t list us either,” Hoskinson joked.

The light-hearted jabs continued into September 2024, when Hoskinson visited Gemini’s booth at a crypto event, displaying a handwritten sign that read “Wen ADA?” and later posted a photo of it on X with the caption, “I’m just saying… @Gemini.”

In a 2025 interview with Blockchain Daily, Hoskinson took a sharper tone and identified Gemini as the last major US exchange still excluding ADA from its platform. He estimated that Gemini may have lost $70 million in revenue over the past five years by not enabling ADA trading.

Hoskinson suggested that rival trading venues like Binance and Coinbase benefited financially from offering ADA, capturing market share and community interest that Gemini did not.

Industry dynamics and toolsIn an environment where decisions by US regulators or the listing of an altcoin can shift the crypto landscape within seconds, traders have increasingly turned to privacy-first platforms to streamline their operations. Many investors are now adopting solutions like CryptoAppsy, which consolidates live charts, tailored news, and market data without the need for account creation.

These consolidated tools offer portfolio tracking, coin-specific news feeds, and macroeconomic indicators in one interface, helping traders react quickly to breaking events, including exchange listing changes like those being sought for ADA.

, /PRNewswire/ -- Hamilton Lane Incorporated (Nasdaq: HLNE) is scheduled to release financial results for the second fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2026 before the market opens on Tuesday, November 3, 2026. A copy of the earnings release and full detailed presentation will be available on the Hamilton Lane Shareholders website at https://shareholders.hamiltonlane.com/.

Hamilton Lane will host a conference call via webcast at 11:00 a.m. ET on November 3 to discuss the results for the second fiscal quarter. For access to the live event via the webcast, visit Hamilton Lane's Shareholder's website by clicking here (https://shareholders.hamiltonlane.com/) at least 15 minutes prior to the start of the call. This feature will be in listen-only mode.

A replay of the webcast will be available approximately two hours after the live broadcast for a period of one year, and can be accessed in the same manner as the live webcast on the Hamilton Lane Shareholders website.

About Hamilton Lane

Hamilton Lane (Nasdaq: HLNE) is one of the largest private markets investment firms globally, providing innovative solutions to institutional and private wealth investors around the world. Dedicated exclusively to private markets investing for more than 30 years, the firm currently employs approximately 800 professionals operating in offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East. Hamilton Lane has $1.1 trillion in assets under management and supervision, composed of more than $146 billion in discretionary assets and $914 billion in non-discretionary assets, as of June 30, 2026. Hamilton Lane specializes in building flexible investment programs that provide clients access to the full spectrum of private markets strategies, sectors and geographies. For more information, please visit our website or follow Hamilton Lane on LinkedIn.

SOURCE Hamilton Lane - Shareholder Relations

 | Source: Parsons Services Company

CHANTILLY, Va., Oct. 06, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Parsons Corporation (NYSE: PSN) will release third-quarter 2026 financial results before the market opens on Wednesday, October 28, 2026. The company will host a conference call at 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time that day to discuss its earnings results and guidance, followed by a question-and-answer session.

Access to a webcast of the live conference call can be obtained through the Investor Relations section of the company's website (https://investors.parsons.com). Those parties interested in participating via telephone may register on the Investor Relations website or by clicking here.

A replay will be available on the company's website approximately two hours after the conference call and continuing for one year.

About Parsons Corporation

Parsons (NYSE: PSN) is a leading disruptive technology provider in the national security and global infrastructure markets, with capabilities across cyber and electronic warfare, space and missile defense, transportation, water and environment, urban development, and critical infrastructure protection. Please visit Parsons.com and follow us on LinkedIn to learn how we’re making an impact.

Contacts:

Media
Bernadette Miller
Parsons Corporation
+1 980.253.9781
[email protected]

Investor Relations
Dave Spille
Parsons Corporation
+1 571.775.0408
[email protected]

Circle has added Aave as a lending option inside its Bitcoin-backed borrowing service for Circle Mint clients, according to The Defiant. The move extends a product that has so far run on Morpho alone.

How the service works Circle formally launched the product, called Digital Asset-Backed Borrowing (DABB), on September 21, 2026. It targets eligible institutional clients who want liquidity but don’t want to part with their Bitcoin.

The mechanics run in three steps. A client deposits native Bitcoin with Circle, which mints a token called cirBTC on a 1:1 basis. Each cirBTC is backed by Bitcoin held in reserve at Circle National Trust.

That token then serves as collateral in third-party on-chain lending markets. Against it, the client borrows USDC, Circle’s dollar stablecoin.

Circle is not the lender in this arrangement. Borrowing rates and available liquidity are set by the third-party protocols. Positions sit in smart wallets that customers control, and those positions follow each protocol’s own liquidation procedures.

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The service is not available to everyone. Customers based in New York are excluded, which limits the pool to institutions eligible under Circle Mint LLC.

From Morpho-only to a second venue DABB debuted with Morpho on Arc, Circle’s EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain. The product’s launch landed alongside the early operational rollout of Arc itself.

Aave was part of the plan from the start, but it wasn’t ready on day one. As of early October 2026, the Aave integration was still not functional. Its arrival now gives Mint clients a second place to post cirBTC and borrow USDC.

The early numbers Morpho’s cirBTC market gives a sense of initial appetite. Shortly after launch, market data showed nearly $18.86 million borrowed against a liquidity pool of $157.85 million.

The market set its liquidation loan-to-value threshold at 86%. Once a loan reaches 86% of the value of the Bitcoin backing it, the position becomes eligible for liquidation.

By October 2, 2026, Morpho deposits on Arc had surpassed $500 million. The cirBTC/USDC borrowing market accounted for a large majority of Morpho’s early activity on the chain.

What this means Adding Aave matters for competition between lending protocols. Morpho had the cirBTC market to itself, and that market drove most of its early Arc activity. A second venue means borrowers and lenders can now split between two protocols.

Circle is effectively the custodian and token issuer, while the lending outcomes depend on code and rules it does not control. An 86% liquidation threshold on Morpho leaves limited room in a sharp drawdown, and borrowers using Aave will need to learn that protocol’s parameters separately.

The New York exclusion caps the near-term reach, as some of the largest US financial institutions are based there and cannot use the service in its current form.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Kaye Quema. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Avalanche’s AVAX token is receiving renewed attention following Hyundai Card’s decision to broaden its blockchain initiatives on the Avalanche network, marking another major step forward in enterprise adoption for the project.

Hyundai Card Deepens Blockchain IntegrationHyundai Card, a leading South Korean credit card company, initially used Avalanche to facilitate internal international transactions. The company has now announced plans to expand its use of the network to handle more complex operational functions, including compliance oversight, reconciliation processes, and transaction settlement both during and beyond regular banking hours.

Heejun Nam, an executive at Hyundai Card, noted that the company prioritized features such as “internal compliance controls, reconciliation, and transactions during and outside banking hours” in its evaluation process. He explained that these operational factors influenced the choice of Avalanche as a blockchain partner.

Heejun Nam explained that operational needs like internal compliance management, detailed reconciliation, and transactions beyond normal business hours led Hyundai Card to select Avalanche for its expanded blockchain strategy.

This move signals a shift in Hyundai Card’s blockchain efforts from earlier pilot tests to a broader, enterprise-focused approach. Industry observers suggest that continued engagement by established corporations like Hyundai Card helps validate the real-world utility of blockchain networks beyond experimental trials.

Mini dictionary: Hyundai Card is a prominent credit card company based in South Korea, known for its tech-driven financial products and services.

AVAX Price Holds Critical LevelsAt the time of reporting, AVAX was trading at $10.89, reflecting a slight daily decline of 1.93%. Despite the pullback, the token remains above important technical support zones that were established after a strong rally in late September.

Technical analysis from TradingView shows AVAX sitting above the $9.45 breakout level and the 20-day exponential moving average (EMA) at $10.29. The token remains higher than the 50-day EMA at $9.05, the 100-day EMA at $8.37, and the 200-day EMA at $8.95. Trading above these key moving averages is often interpreted as a positive sign for underlying market sentiment.

EMAValue20-day$10.2950-day$9.05100-day$8.37200-day$8.95Recent price action has kept the token in a consolidation phase, with support near $10 and resistance seen between $11.50 and $12.00. A break below the 20-day EMA could direct sellers toward the $9.45 support, while a move above resistance could trigger new bullish activity.

Derivatives data from CoinGlass shows open interest has reached roughly $640 million, significantly higher than levels seen in August. Elevated open interest, especially with stable prices, points to ongoing participation rather than traders exiting the market. Volumes also increased during September’s rally and remain stronger than earlier in the quarter.

Liquidations have affected both long and short holders recently, highlighting a competitive environment where neither side has established clear dominance.

Institutional participation is often viewed as a long-term driver, signifying that networks are gaining practical applications beyond pure speculation.

Outlook as Corporate Use ExpandsHyundai Card’s evolving blockchain usage points to a growing enterprise demand for Avalanche technology, with potential implications for broader adoption across the financial sector. While this latest initiative may not immediately affect AVAX demand, it further reinforces blockchain’s credibility as part of corporate infrastructure.

If similar companies adopt comparable strategies, Avalanche could strengthen its reputation as a blockchain tailored for real-world applications, expanding its reach beyond decentralized finance and speculative trading.

For now, market participants will watch how AVAX reacts to these fundamental developments, especially with the technical setup showing robust support above $10. Continued defense of key levels and increased open interest suggest that sentiment, while cautious, remains constructive as the project moves into the next phase of enterprise adoption.

DALLAS, Oct. 06, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Applied Digital (NASDAQ: APLD), a U.S. based designer, developer, owner and operator of large-scale, purpose-built data centers to support high-performance computing (“HPC”) workloads, including artificial intelligence (“AI”), machine learning, and other accelerated-compute applications, today announced it has entered into an agreement providing access to up to 1 gigawatt (GW) of potential power capacity in Finland, representing the Company’s first development opportunity outside of the United States.

With this agreement, the Company plans to build a large-scale AI Factory campus capable of scaling to as much as 1 GW. Initial power availability is anticipated beginning in 2028. Applied Digital has begun marketing the site and is currently engaged in discussions with leading global hyperscale customers.

While Applied Digital’s near-term development strategy and execution priorities remain firmly centered on its growing U.S. portfolio, Finland represents a measured first step toward selectively extending the Company’s platform into attractive international markets over time. The agreement was structured to provide meaningful long-term growth potential while limiting the Company’s initial exposure and maintaining disciplined capital deployment.

“Applied Digital has built its platform around identifying the right power in the right markets and turning that power into operational AI capacity,” said Wes Cummins, Chairman and CEO of Applied Digital. “Finland stood out because many of the characteristics that have supported our success in North Dakota are also present in the Nordics — a favorable climate, an attractive energy ecosystem, strong connectivity and the ability to develop at meaningful scale.”

Cummins continued, “This is a deliberate first step, not a change in our strategy. Our focus remains firmly on executing the projects in front of us in the United States. At the same time, as we continue building Applied Digital into a category leader in AI infrastructure, we believe it is important to selectively secure compelling sites that can extend our growth runway over the long term.”

Finland has emerged as an increasingly attractive market for hyperscale and AI development, supported by its cooler climate, established energy and digital networks, and growing investment from global technology leaders. Applied Digital believes these characteristics align closely with the development principles that underpin its U.S. portfolio: securing scalable power and land in markets where AI capacity can be developed efficiently, responsibly and repeatedly.

The Finland campus represents the first potential application of Applied Digital’s AI Factory campus development model outside the U.S. The Company intends to advance the project in a disciplined manner, with future investment and development decisions tied to customer demand, commercial milestones and the achievement of necessary regulatory and development requirements.

“Our ability to scale is not about planting flags in as many markets as possible,” Cummins said. “It is about identifying exceptional sites and applying the same disciplined model repeatedly. We have demonstrated that model across our U.S. portfolio. Finland gives us the opportunity to begin proving that platform can travel.”

About Applied Digital

Applied Digital (Nasdaq: APLD) — named Best Data Center in the Americas 2025 by Datacloud — designs, builds, and operates high-performance, sustainably engineered data centers and colocation services for artificial intelligence, cloud, networking, and blockchain workloads. Headquartered in Dallas, TX, and founded in 2021, the company combines hyperscale expertise, closed-loop cooling, and rapid deployment capabilities to deliver secure, scalable compute at industry-leading speed and efficiency, while creating economic opportunities in underserved communities through its AI Factory franchise model.

Learn more at applieddigital.com or follow @APLDdigital on X and LinkedIn.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains “forward-looking statements” as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 regarding, among other things, future operating and financial performance, product development, market position, business strategy and objectives, and future financing plans. These statements use words, and variations of words, such as “will,” “continue,” “build,” “future,” “increase,” “drive,” “believe,” “look,” “ahead,” “confident,” “proven,” “deliver,” “outlook,” “expect,” “project” and “predict.” Other examples of forward-looking statements may include, but are not limited to, (i) statements that reflect perspectives and expectations regarding lease agreements and any current or prospective data center campus development; (ii) statements about the high-performance computing (HPC) industry; (iii) statements of company plans and objectives, including the company’s evolving business model, or estimates or predictions of actions by suppliers; (iv) statements of future economic performance; (v) statements regarding international markets and expansion and development internationally, and (vi) statements of assumptions underlying other statements and statements about the company or its business. You are cautioned not to rely on these forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations of future events and thus are inherently subject to uncertainty. If underlying assumptions prove inaccurate or known or unknown risks or uncertainties materialize, actual results could vary materially from the company’s expectations and projections. These risks, uncertainties, and other factors include, among others: whether or not our customers exercise the renewal options under their leases with us (if not, we will not recognize further revenue from such customer under its respective lease); our ability to complete construction of our data center campuses as planned, including internationally; the lead time of customer acquisition and leasing decisions and related internal approval processes; changes to artificial intelligence and HPC infrastructure needs and their impact on future plans; costs related to the HPC operations and strategy; our ability to timely deliver any services required in connection with completion of installation under lease agreements; our ability to raise additional capital to fund the ongoing datacenter construction and operations; differences in sourcing materials and labor internationally; our ability to obtain financing of datacenter leases and more broadly for our development and general corporate activities; our dependence on principal customers, including our ability to execute and perform our obligations under our leases with key customers; our ability to timely and successfully build new hosting facilities with the appropriate contractual margins and efficiencies; power or other supply disruptions and equipment failures; the inability to comply with regulations, developments and changes in regulations, including internationally; cash flow and access to capital; availability of financing to continue to grow our business; decline in demand for our products and services; maintenance of third party relationships; and conditions in the debt and equity capital markets. A further list and description of these risks, uncertainties, and other factors can be found in the company’s most recently filed Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, including in the sections captioned “Forward-Looking Statements” and “Risk Factors,” and in the company’s subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Copies of these filings are available online at www.sec.gov, on the company’s website (www.applieddigital.com) under “Investors,” or on request from the company. Information in this press release is as of the dates and time periods indicated herein, and the company does not undertake to update any of the information contained in these materials, except as required by law.

Media Contact
JSA (Jaymie Scotto & Associates)
(856) 264-7827
[email protected]

Investor Relations Contacts
Matt Glover or Ralf Esper
Gateway Group, Inc.
(949) 574-3860
[email protected]

Kintra Wealth LLC increased its position in shares of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN – Free Report) by 11.7% during the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 104,575 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock after acquiring an additional 10,969 shares during the quarter. Amazon.com comprises approximately 1.3% of Kintra Wealth LLC’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 21st biggest holding. Kintra Wealth LLC’s holdings in Amazon.com were worth $24,924,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Other large investors also recently modified their holdings of the company. TOP Private Wealth LLC. bought a new position in shares of Amazon.com during the second quarter worth about $29,000. Bard Associates Inc. bought a new stake in Amazon.com in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $32,000. Longfellow Investment Management Co. LLC bought a new stake in Amazon.com in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $33,000. Lifetime Wealth Management P.C. acquired a new position in Amazon.com during the 4th quarter worth approximately $45,000. Finally, Prudent Man Investment Management Inc. boosted its position in Amazon.com by 87.7% during the 4th quarter. Prudent Man Investment Management Inc. now owns 229 shares of the e-commerce giant’s stock worth $53,000 after acquiring an additional 107 shares during the last quarter. 72.20% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Analyst Ratings Changes A number of analysts have recently issued reports on AMZN shares. KeyCorp lifted their price objective on shares of Amazon.com from $335.00 to $350.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Friday, July 31st. Rosenblatt Securities increased their target price on shares of Amazon.com from $335.00 to $360.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, September 30th. Piper Sandler reaffirmed an “overweight” rating and issued a $320.00 target price (up from $315.00) on shares of Amazon.com in a research report on Friday, July 31st. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft reiterated a “buy” rating and issued a $325.00 price target (up from $315.00) on shares of Amazon.com in a research note on Friday, July 31st. Finally, Truist Financial boosted their price target on shares of Amazon.com from $320.00 to $350.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, July 31st. Fifty-six analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and three have issued a Hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $321.63.

View Our Latest Stock Analysis on Amazon.com Amazon.com Trading Down 0.0% Shares of NASDAQ:AMZN opened at $251.40 on Tuesday. Amazon.com, Inc. has a 52-week low of $196.00 and a 52-week high of $287.20. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23, a quick ratio of 0.87 and a current ratio of 1.03. The company has a market capitalization of $2.71 trillion, a P/E ratio of 20.23, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.95 and a beta of 1.45. The company has a 50-day simple moving average of $257.46 and a 200 day simple moving average of $248.76.

Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN – Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, July 30th. The e-commerce giant reported $5.75 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.82 by $3.93. The company had revenue of $200.61 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $197.03 billion. Amazon.com had a return on equity of 18.00% and a net margin of 17.44%.The business’s revenue was up 19.6% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the firm posted $1.68 earnings per share. Sell-side analysts forecast that Amazon.com, Inc. will post 8.01 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling In related news, CEO Andrew R. Jassy sold 20,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, August 21st. The shares were sold at an average price of $259.01, for a total value of $5,180,200.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 2,235,766 shares in the company, valued at approximately $579,085,751.66. This represents a 0.89% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, SVP David Zapolsky sold 9,258 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 24th. The shares were sold at an average price of $259.77, for a total transaction of $2,404,950.66. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president directly owned 41,190 shares in the company, valued at approximately $10,699,926.30. This represents a 18.35% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last three months, insiders sold 71,589 shares of company stock valued at $18,580,515. 8.90% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Amazon.com News Roundup Here are the key news stories impacting Amazon.com this week:

Positive Sentiment: TD Cowen reaffirmed its Buy rating and raised its price target to $350, implying substantial upside. Analysts and investment articles also point to AMZN’s roughly 20-times earnings valuation as historically low for the company. TD Cowen Reaffirms Buy Rating for Amazon Positive Sentiment: AWS is expanding its AI capabilities by hiring former Microsoft Copilot executive Pedram Rezaei to work on agentic AI, coding and workplace tools. AWS also says AI costs are falling rapidly, potentially broadening adoption and supporting future cloud demand. Amazon Hires Microsoft AI Leader Positive Sentiment: Amazon signed a multiyear, $1 billion-plus agreement with Synopsys to strengthen its custom-chip strategy. Developing its own chips could reduce reliance on Nvidia and improve AWS infrastructure economics over time. Amazon’s Chip Deal Positive Sentiment: Amazon is investing in data-center power and community support, including more than $3 billion tied to Maryland’s Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant and $1 billion for job training and energy-efficiency programs. These investments may ease local opposition and remove infrastructure constraints on AWS expansion. Amazon Data Center Community Investment Positive Sentiment: Prime Big Deal Days and holiday merchandising, including Amazon’s annual kids’ gift book, provide near-term catalysts for fourth-quarter retail sales. Amazon Prepares for Holiday Sales Neutral Sentiment: Amazon is reportedly considering moving approximately $8 billion of Nvidia chips into a special-purpose vehicle and leasing them back. The structure could improve capital flexibility, but it also highlights the scale and financing burden of AI infrastructure spending. Amazon Nvidia Chip Financing Negative Sentiment: Amazon blocks outside AI shopping agents while rivals are allowing greater access, raising concerns that agentic commerce could weaken Amazon’s direct relationship with shoppers or increase competitive pressure. AI Agents and Retailers Negative Sentiment: Investors remain concerned that AI infrastructure spending may require trillions of dollars in additional revenue to justify current industry investment. Data-center opposition, power shortages and uncertain returns could pressure margins and cash flow. Negative Sentiment: CEO Douglas Herrington sold 1,000 shares under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plan. The transaction was small relative to his remaining holdings and is not necessarily a signal of deteriorating confidence, but it may add modest headline pressure. SEC Filing Amazon.com Company Profile (Free Report)

Amazon.com, Inc is a global technology and commerce company that operates online marketplaces, physical stores, and a broad portfolio of digital and cloud-based services. The company offers consumer products across categories such as electronics, household goods, apparel, groceries, and entertainment, while also providing third-party sellers with tools for listing, selling, and fulfilling orders.

Amazon’s major businesses include Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides cloud computing, storage, database, analytics, and artificial intelligence services; Prime, a membership program that includes shipping, streaming, and other benefits; and digital entertainment services such as Prime Video, Amazon Music, Kindle, and Audible.

Featured Articles Five stocks we like better than Amazon.com NVIDIA’s Record High Raises a Bigger Question About How Far the Rally Can Run A Manufacturing Surprise Could Be a Big Win for These 2 Companies What a $1 Billion Chip Deal Says About Amazon’s AI Ambitions 3 Stocks Benefiting From AI Demand Just Announced Major Buybacks

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EJMK Ventures LLC lifted its position in Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 14.9% in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor owned 10,876 shares of the software giant’s stock after acquiring an additional 1,407 shares during the quarter. Microsoft makes up approximately 1.8% of EJMK Ventures LLC’s portfolio, making the stock its 11th largest position. EJMK Ventures LLC’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $4,057,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Auto Owners Insurance Co boosted its position in Microsoft by 56,160.8% in the fourth quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co now owns 60,116,384 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $29,073,486,000 after purchasing an additional 60,009,531 shares during the last quarter. Amundi increased its position in shares of Microsoft by 30.8% during the 1st quarter. Amundi now owns 41,675,076 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $15,426,862,000 after purchasing an additional 9,814,598 shares during the last quarter. Fisher Asset Management LLC raised its stake in shares of Microsoft by 1.8% during the 4th quarter. Fisher Asset Management LLC now owns 25,300,410 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $12,235,785,000 after purchasing an additional 458,014 shares during the period. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP raised its stake in shares of Microsoft by 10.5% during the 1st quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 29,323,744 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $10,852,884,000 after purchasing an additional 2,784,809 shares during the period. Finally, Hsbc Holdings PLC boosted its holdings in shares of Microsoft by 7.8% in the 4th quarter. Hsbc Holdings PLC now owns 22,138,798 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $10,715,379,000 after buying an additional 1,599,412 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 71.13% of the company’s stock.

Microsoft Stock Performance Microsoft stock opened at $525.18 on Tuesday. Microsoft Corporation has a fifty-two week low of $349.20 and a fifty-two week high of $553.72. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07, a quick ratio of 1.22 and a current ratio of 1.23. The stock has a market cap of $3.90 trillion, a P/E ratio of 29.24, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.66 and a beta of 1.10. The firm’s fifty day moving average price is $492.81 and its 200-day moving average price is $431.07.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The software giant reported $4.74 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $4.24 by $0.50. The company had revenue of $90.01 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $87.62 billion. Microsoft had a net margin of 40.31% and a return on equity of 31.98%. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 17.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $3.65 earnings per share. On average, equities research analysts expect that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.62 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. Microsoft Increases Dividend The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 10th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, November 19th will be issued a $0.98 dividend. This represents a $3.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.7%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 19th. This is an increase from Microsoft’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.91. Microsoft’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 20.27%.

Insider Transactions at Microsoft In other Microsoft news, EVP Takeshi Numoto sold 4,810 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, August 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $496.48, for a total value of $2,388,068.80. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president directly owned 42,677 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $21,188,276.96. The trade was a 10.13% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, EVP Amy Hood sold 41,674 shares of Microsoft stock in a transaction dated Monday, September 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $498.27, for a total value of $20,764,903.98. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president owned 533,624 shares in the company, valued at approximately $265,888,830.48. This represents a 7.24% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders have sold a total of 143,009 shares of company stock valued at $71,420,699 over the last 90 days. Company insiders own 0.03% of the company’s stock.

Microsoft News Summary Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

Positive Sentiment: Melius Research upgraded Microsoft to Buy from Hold and raised its price target to $665. The firm said rising corporate concerns about AI risks could increase demand for Microsoft’s security, governance and compliance products, while positioning Azure as a relatively dependable way to participate in the AI trend. Microsoft stock rises as Melius upgrades to Buy Positive Sentiment: Broad market strength also supported MSFT. The Nasdaq reached a record as megacap technology stocks rallied on optimism about earnings growth, with Microsoft among the sector leaders. Expectations for strong technology-sector profits continue to support investor appetite for the shares. Nasdaq hits record as megacap gains offset elevated Treasury yields Positive Sentiment: Microsoft continues expanding Copilot’s enterprise usefulness. Wood Mackenzie connected its proprietary energy data and analytics to Microsoft Copilot through a new Model Context Protocol connector, providing another example of specialized business content being integrated into Microsoft’s AI ecosystem. Wood Mackenzie connects energy intelligence with Microsoft Copilot Positive Sentiment: Upcoming Xbox and Xbox Game Pass releases provided a smaller consumer-business catalyst. New game launches may support engagement and subscription activity, although the impact is likely less significant than Azure and AI developments. Microsoft stock rises ahead of new Xbox game releases Neutral Sentiment: Microsoft and Meta reportedly encouraged employees to reduce their use of Anthropic’s Claude in favor of internal AI tools. The move could lower Microsoft’s external AI expenses and strengthen Copilot adoption, but it also indicates ongoing competition and uncertainty over which AI models will deliver the best economics. Microsoft and Meta steer staff from Anthropic Claude to in-house AI Negative Sentiment: Amazon hired longtime Microsoft AI executive Pedram Rezaei, formerly associated with Copilot. The departure could raise concerns about retaining senior AI talent as cloud and software rivals intensify their competition. Amazon hires a Microsoft AI leader Negative Sentiment: Investors remain focused on execution risks. Microsoft’s large backlog offers revenue visibility, but the timing of recognition, infrastructure spending and cash conversion could limit near-term benefits. Questions also remain about whether Copilot can become a breakout AI application. How much revenue visibility does Microsoft’s backlog provide? Analyst Ratings Changes Several analysts have issued reports on MSFT shares. The Goldman Sachs Group restated a “buy” rating and issued a $640.00 target price on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Barclays decreased their price objective on Microsoft from $545.00 to $512.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Jefferies Financial Group initiated coverage on Microsoft in a research note on Monday. They issued a “buy” rating on the stock. Raymond James Financial downgraded shares of Microsoft from a “moderate buy” rating to a “strong sell” rating in a report on Wednesday, September 23rd. Finally, William Blair started coverage on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Monday. They set an “outperform” rating for the company. Forty-one research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have given a Hold rating and two have given a Sell rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Microsoft currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $578.73.

Read Our Latest Report on MSFT

About Microsoft (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company that develops software, cloud services, devices, gaming products and business solutions. Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the company is best known for the Windows operating system and Microsoft Office productivity software. Microsoft is headquartered in Redmond, Washington, and serves consumers, businesses, governments and educational institutions worldwide.

Microsoft’s productivity and business offerings include Microsoft 365 applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, along with collaboration tools including Teams.

Featured Articles Five stocks we like better than Microsoft NVIDIA’s Record High Raises a Bigger Question About How Far the Rally Can Run A Manufacturing Surprise Could Be a Big Win for These 2 Companies What a $1 Billion Chip Deal Says About Amazon’s AI Ambitions 3 Stocks Benefiting From AI Demand Just Announced Major Buybacks Want to see what other hedge funds are holding MSFT? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report).

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Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) has recorded a major insider trading transaction after director Stephen Rusckowski purchased nearly $3.5 million worth of stock.

The filing shows that Rusckowski acquired 25,000 Oracle shares on September 29, 2026, at an average price of $139.35 per share, for a total investment of approximately $3.48 million. 

The purchase was disclosed as Oracle shares traded well below their 2026 highs. By press time, ORCL stock was trading at $142, down nearly 30% year-to-date in 2026.

Oracle insider transaction. Source: Barchart Notably, the transaction stands out because insider purchases of this size are relatively rare, particularly during periods of market uncertainty. 

Investors often view insider buying as a sign that company executives or directors believe a stock is undervalued.

Rusckowski’s purchase follows another notable insider development. On September 12, Oracle founder Larry Ellison canceled plans to sell up to 50 million shares worth about $7.5 billion, with the company confirming that no shares were sold. 

Combined with Rusckowski’s purchase, the moves have been viewed by some investors as a sign of insider confidence despite Oracle’s sharp decline in 2026.

Oracle stock fundamentals  The insider purchase follows several significant developments that have reshaped Oracle’s investment narrative in recent months.

In June, the company reported fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter results that highlighted the scale of its AI-driven growth. Oracle posted full-year revenue of $67.4 billion, while cloud revenue surged 39%.

Oracle’s cloud infrastructure business grew 77% during fiscal 2026, accelerating to 93% growth in the fourth quarter. 

The company also revealed remaining performance obligations of $638 billion, providing investors with visibility into future contracted revenue.

Management projected fiscal 2027 revenue of approximately $90 billion, reinforcing expectations that Oracle could emerge as one of the biggest beneficiaries of rising enterprise demand for AI computing infrastructure.

Momentum continued on October 1 when reports emerged that Chinese technology giant Tencent had signed a five-year agreement worth about $7 billion to lease roughly 100,000 advanced AI chips through Oracle-operated data centers in Southeast Asia.

The deal is considered one of the largest AI infrastructure agreements announced this year and further strengthened Oracle’s position in the rapidly expanding AI cloud market.

ORCL stock 2026 pressure  Despite strong cloud growth, Oracle stock has faced pressure in 2026 as investors weigh the cost of its AI expansion. 

The company reported $32 billion in operating cash flow but negative free cash flow of $23.7 billion due to heavy spending on AI infrastructure. Oracle also raised $43 billion in debt and $5 billion in equity financing during fiscal 2026.

While bulls see Oracle as a long-term AI winner backed by a $638 billion backlog and a reported $7 billion Tencent deal, bears remain concerned about debt levels, spending requirements, and execution risks.

Featured image via Shutterstock

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MassMutual Private Wealth & Trust FSB raised its position in Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN – Free Report) by 105.8% during the third quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 13,514 shares of the medical research company’s stock after purchasing an additional 6,947 shares during the quarter. MassMutual Private Wealth & Trust FSB’s holdings in Amgen were worth $5,696,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other large investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Wellington Altus USA Inc. grew its position in Amgen by 72.3% in the 2nd quarter. Wellington Altus USA Inc. now owns 81 shares of the medical research company’s stock valued at $28,000 after acquiring an additional 34 shares in the last quarter. Tower View Wealth Management LLC lifted its position in shares of Amgen by 331.6% during the first quarter. Tower View Wealth Management LLC now owns 82 shares of the medical research company’s stock worth $29,000 after purchasing an additional 63 shares in the last quarter. Security National Bank of Sioux City Iowa IA purchased a new position in shares of Amgen in the second quarter valued at approximately $36,000. Evergreen Advisors LLC purchased a new position in shares of Amgen in the first quarter valued at approximately $37,000. Finally, University of Texas Texas AM Investment Management Co. purchased a new position in shares of Amgen in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $44,000. 76.50% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Analyst Ratings Changes Several equities research analysts recently weighed in on the stock. Barclays upped their target price on shares of Amgen from $360.00 to $380.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Friday, August 14th. Cantor Fitzgerald reissued a “neutral” rating on shares of Amgen in a research report on Monday. Oppenheimer restated an “outperform” rating on shares of Amgen in a research note on Wednesday, September 23rd. Piper Sandler upped their price objective on Amgen from $427.00 to $457.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research report on Thursday, August 20th. Finally, HSBC cut Amgen from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating and reduced their price objective for the company from $445.00 to $425.00 in a research note on Thursday, September 10th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, eleven have assigned a Buy rating, fifteen have given a Hold rating and three have issued a Sell rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $385.25.

Get Our Latest Report on Amgen Insider Transactions at Amgen In other news, SVP Rachna Khosla sold 1,252 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, August 13th. The stock was sold at an average price of $416.43, for a total transaction of $521,370.36. Following the sale, the senior vice president owned 6,404 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $2,666,817.72. This trade represents a 16.35% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, SVP Nancy A. Grygiel sold 2,970 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, August 6th. The stock was sold at an average price of $402.16, for a total value of $1,194,415.20. Following the sale, the senior vice president owned 7,340 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $2,951,854.40. The trade was a 28.81% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. Insiders have sold a total of 6,222 shares of company stock valued at $2,540,926 over the last ninety days. 0.85% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Amgen Trading Down 0.0% NASDAQ AMGN opened at $402.98 on Tuesday. Amgen Inc. has a 52 week low of $288.00 and a 52 week high of $447.03. The firm has a 50 day moving average of $411.25 and a two-hundred day moving average of $370.65. The company has a quick ratio of 1.13, a current ratio of 1.37 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 4.44. The stock has a market capitalization of $217.86 billion, a PE ratio of 25.05, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.91 and a beta of 0.41.

Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN – Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, August 4th. The medical research company reported $6.29 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $5.62 by $0.67. The business had revenue of $10.05 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $9.43 billion. Amgen had a net margin of 22.95% and a return on equity of 124.14%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 9.5% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $6.02 EPS. Amgen has set its FY 2026 guidance at 22.300-23.500 EPS. As a group, research analysts expect that Amgen Inc. will post 22.94 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Amgen Dividend Announcement The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, September 11th. Shareholders of record on Friday, August 21st were issued a dividend of $2.52 per share. This represents a $10.08 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 2.5%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, August 21st. Amgen’s payout ratio is 62.65%.

About Amgen (Free Report)

Amgen Inc is a biotechnology company that discovers, develops, manufactures and delivers medicines for serious illnesses. Its research and commercial activities focus on areas including oncology, cardiovascular disease, inflammation, bone health, neuroscience and rare diseases. The company uses biologic research, human genetics and other advanced technologies to develop targeted therapies and supports patients through treatment and disease-management services.

Amgen’s portfolio includes medicines such as Enbrel for inflammatory diseases; Prolia and Evenity for osteoporosis; Xgeva for cancer-related bone complications; Repatha for certain cardiovascular conditions; Otezla for inflammatory diseases; Aimovig for migraine prevention; Tezspire for severe asthma; and Lumakras for certain cancers.

Featured Articles Five stocks we like better than Amgen NVIDIA’s Record High Raises a Bigger Question About How Far the Rally Can Run A Manufacturing Surprise Could Be a Big Win for These 2 Companies What a $1 Billion Chip Deal Says About Amazon’s AI Ambitions 3 Stocks Benefiting From AI Demand Just Announced Major Buybacks Want to see what other hedge funds are holding AMGN? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN – Free Report).

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MassMutual Private Wealth & Trust FSB boosted its holdings in shares of Prologis, Inc. (NYSE:PLD – Free Report) by 14.5% in the third quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 40,258 shares of the real estate investment trust’s stock after buying an additional 5,091 shares during the quarter. MassMutual Private Wealth & Trust FSB’s holdings in Prologis were worth $5,227,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also bought and sold shares of the company. Baird Financial Group Inc. boosted its position in Prologis by 20.6% in the 2nd quarter. Baird Financial Group Inc. now owns 122,809 shares of the real estate investment trust’s stock worth $16,637,000 after purchasing an additional 21,000 shares in the last quarter. Callan Family Office LLC purchased a new stake in Prologis during the second quarter worth $3,394,000. BlackRock Inc. purchased a new stake in Prologis during the second quarter worth $14,006,587,000. AssuredPartners Investment Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in Prologis during the second quarter valued at $3,436,000. Finally, Nykredit A S acquired a new stake in Prologis during the second quarter valued at $40,490,000. 93.50% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Analyst Ratings Changes Several research firms have recently issued reports on PLD. Mizuho increased their target price on shares of Prologis from $150.00 to $159.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Friday, July 17th. BMO Capital Markets reduced their price target on Prologis from $162.00 to $158.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Monday, June 29th. Scotiabank increased their price target on Prologis from $146.00 to $150.00 and gave the stock a “sector perform” rating in a research report on Thursday, July 23rd. Truist Financial raised their price objective on Prologis from $154.00 to $162.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 21st. Finally, Barclays boosted their price objective on Prologis from $139.00 to $156.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Thursday, July 16th. Sixteen research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and seven have issued a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $154.52.

View Our Latest Stock Report on Prologis Prologis Trading Down 0.7% PLD stock opened at $127.98 on Tuesday. Prologis, Inc. has a 12-month low of $111.03 and a 12-month high of $153.35. The business’s 50-day moving average is $138.11 and its 200 day moving average is $139.95. The company has a current ratio of 0.70, a quick ratio of 0.70 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.63. The stock has a market cap of $119.42 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 28.50 and a beta of 1.31.

Prologis (NYSE:PLD – Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Thursday, July 16th. The real estate investment trust reported $1.13 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.75 by $0.38. Prologis had a return on equity of 7.29% and a net margin of 45.79%.The business had revenue of $2.43 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $2.16 billion. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $1.46 earnings per share. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 11.0% compared to the same quarter last year. Prologis has set its FY 2026 guidance at 6.220-6.300 EPS. On average, sell-side analysts anticipate that Prologis, Inc. will post 6.27 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Prologis Dividend Announcement The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, September 30th. Shareholders of record on Wednesday, September 16th were paid a dividend of $1.07 per share. This represents a $4.28 annualized dividend and a yield of 3.3%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Wednesday, September 16th. Prologis’s payout ratio is 95.32%.

Prologis Profile (Free Report)

Prologis, Inc (NYSE: PLD) is a global logistics real estate company that owns, develops, acquires and manages distribution facilities, warehouses and other properties used throughout the supply chain. Its portfolio serves manufacturers, retailers, transportation providers and third-party logistics companies.

The company provides logistics real estate and related services in key markets across North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America. Its properties are generally located near major population centers, transportation hubs, ports and trade corridors, supporting e-commerce, industrial and distribution operations.

Prologis traces its roots to 1983 and was created in its current form through the 1999 merger of ProLogis and Security Capital Industrial Trust.

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A stronger British Pound against the US Dollar features in BofA's forecasts, with GBP/USD reaching 1.37 by end-2026 despite UK policy uncertainty. Foreign currency strategists at Bank of America see the Pound Sterling recovering against the US Dollar by year-end, but want greater clarity on UK policy before taking a more positive near-term view.

Its recent exchange rate forecasts/predictions show GBP/USD at 1.37 at end-2026, 1.45 at end-2027 and 1.47 at end-2028.

The Pound to Dollar exchange rate traded near $1.3209 on Tuesday morning, down 0.08%, after slipping 0.15% on Monday.

That leaves BofA's year-end forecast approximately 3.7% above the current rate, following September's 2.10% decline.

"Elsewhere, we maintain a constructive medium-term view on GBP but prefer to await greater clarity on UK policies."

Image: Pound to Dollar exchange rate one-month chart Pound Sterling: BofA sees improvements beyond interest rates The bank argues that Sterling has become less vulnerable to fiscal concerns than other major currencies, despite the approaching Budget.

It identifies overseas investment as one source of support:

"Sticky FDI inflows have provided a meaningful fillip to the UK's balance of payments"

FDI means foreign direct investment, which can provide longer-lasting funding than short-term portfolio flows.

BofA also says gilts have held up better than other bond markets, helped by the Bank of England's overhaul of its bond-sales programme.

Closer relations with Europe form another part of its argument:

"Finally, strengthening EU-UK ties now appears a more focused objective for the UK government. While serious negotiations are unlikely near-term, the prospect of all options being on the table is a medium-term positive for GBP. We stay constructive."

US Dollar (USD) strength remains an immediate obstacle BofA's near-term Dollar analysis still sees scope for further gains, making its Sterling forecast a recovery call rather than an endorsement of current momentum.

Monday's upward revision to the UK services PMI failed to prevent GBP/USD ending the day lower.

Image: GBP/USD 48hr chart Our reading is that stronger domestic data alone may be insufficient: BofA's case also depends on confidence in UK policy and sustained investment inflows.

Exchange Rates UK Research Our currency coverage draws on live market data, official economic releases and published bank research.

Marvell Technology (MRVL -0.38%) closed at $13.17 a share on Oct. 5, 2016. Ten years later to the day, it closed at $271.25.

On price alone, that turned a $10,000 stake into around $206,000, compounding at about 35% a year. In the same decade, $10,000 in the S&P 500 (^GSPC +0.66%) rose to about $36,000 on the same basis.

But most of Marvell's rise is recent. Nearly three-quarters of it came in 2026 alone, as the shares more than tripled. And when I split the decade into stretches, I see the stock's valuation did almost as much of the work as the company's earnings.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Two runs and a long stallThe first stretch was strong. By the end of 2021, Marvell stock had risen to $87.49, and the $10,000 stake was worth around $66,400.

Then the stock went nowhere for four years. Shares dropped over 60% from a December 2021 high to early January 2023, shrinking the stake to around $26,000 at the bottom.

They rebounded, of course. But Marvell finished 2025 at $84.98, slightly under where it ended 2021. Put another way, an investor who bought at the end of 2021 had nothing to show for four years of patience.

This year changed that. The stock started 2026 near $85, closed at a peak of $316.43 in early June, and nearly halved by late July before rebounding. As I write, that's a gain of around 219% this year, and it took the original $10,000 from about $64,500 to $206,000.

The valuation did almost as much as the earningsMarvell's business grew a lot over the decade. Revenue climbed from $2.3 billion in fiscal 2017, which ended in January 2017, to around $9.5 billion in the last four reported quarters. Non-GAAP (adjusted) earnings per share went from $0.63 to $3.30 in the same period -- around a fivefold gain, or about 19% a year.

A decade ago, Marvell called itself a leader in storage, networking, and connectivity chips. Now, data centers bring in 79% of its revenue.

But a fivefold rise in earnings doesn't explain a 20-fold rise in the stock. The rest came from investors paying more for every dollar of profit.

At $13.17, shares traded at about 21 times adjusted earnings for fiscal 2017. Now, they trade at about 82 times the adjusted earnings Marvell posted in its past four quarters.

Adjusted earnings per share reached $1.57 in fiscal 2022 and were at exactly that level again in fiscal 2025. Then they jumped 81% to $2.84 in fiscal 2026, which ended in January 2026. But the stock went nowhere from the end of 2021 through 2025, because its price-to-earnings ratio dropped from about 56 times adjusted earnings for fiscal 2022 to about 30 times adjusted earnings for fiscal 2026.

This year ran the other way. Adjusted earnings per share over the last four quarters are up about 16% from fiscal 2026's total, but the stock tripled.

Investors are paying up for what management says is ahead. Late in August, Marvell forecast revenue of around $18 billion next fiscal year, and it expects its custom business, which designs chips to a cloud company's own specs, to more than double that year. Even on next fiscal year's expected earnings, the stock costs about 40 times earnings.

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A repeat would need far faster earnings growthSay investors still pay 82 times adjusted earnings in 2036. For the stock to climb 20-fold again, earnings per share would have to compound at around 35% a year for a full decade. That's almost double the rate of the last 10 years.

And if the price-to-earnings multiple slid back toward the 30 times adjusted earnings the stock fetched at the end of 2025, the growth needed would be far higher.

Much of that weight would fall on the custom business. On the August earnings call, CEO Matt Murphy pointed to more than $10 billion in custom revenue for fiscal 2029 -- over four times what all of Marvell took in during fiscal 2017. He said he saw upside to that figure, and Marvell will spell out its longer-term strategy at its investor day in New York on Oct. 6. But another 20-fold decade would arguably need growth far beyond fiscal 2029's target, lasting for years after that.

I think Marvell's business can keep growing faster than most chipmakers. Yet the 2022 to 2025 stretch showed what can happen to shareholders when earnings climb and the valuation falls. Starting at 82 times adjusted earnings, the next decade's returns will probably rest mainly on earnings growth, and they may look much more ordinary than the past decade's.

Collaboration will help SITA create a Frontier Finance function - data-driven, innovative and focused on growth and measurable business value - using AI and new ways of working

, /PRNewswire/ -- Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH) today announced that it has been selected by SITA, the world's leading specialist in air transport technology, as the implementation and transformation partner for SITA's SKY program. The groupwide, finance-led initiative will help SITA implement a modern cloud platform across finance, procurement and supply chain processes, designed to deliver measurable business value across SITA's global operations in more than 200 countries and territories.

The transformation is designed to move finance beyond reporting and operational processing, establishing it as a more strategic, growth-focused partner to the business. Cognizant will work with SITA to implement a cloud-based ERP and management platform spanning planning, performance, project management and procurement. By connecting these functions through a shared data foundation, consistent ways of working and AI-led insights, SITA aims to strengthen planning, identify opportunities earlier and align resources more closely with its growth priorities.

Cognizant's AI-first approach combines deep finance transformation expertise with generative AI implementation agents, informed by intellectual property developed through more than 800 cloud ERP projects. It draws on embedded platform AI capabilities and custom agents built using Cognizant's agentic AI capabilities to embed intelligence into planning, forecasting, project management and day-to-day finance activities — helping SITA accelerate delivery and put AI to work across live finance, procurement and project management processes.

"SITA's SKY program is a transformation program aimed at delivering strong business outcomes," said Nicolas Husson, Chief Financial Officer at SITA. "By standardizing core processes on Oracle Fusion Cloud and building AI into how we operate, we aim to create a more agile finance organization and a strong foundation for our next phase of growth." 

"SITA plays a critical role in the global air transport ecosystem, and its growth requires an enterprise platform that can scale with the business, with technology and AI serving the strategy rather than defining it," said Saket Gulati, Senior Vice President and Head of Northern Europe at Cognizant. "By bringing together our cloud platform expertise, AI capabilities and end-to-end transformation experience, we will help SITA build a modern data and operating model foundation, embed new ways of working, and help translate technology investment into growth and measurable business value."

"Enterprise platforms are the backbone of how global organizations run, and SITA's SKY program is a great example of what's possible when that backbone is rebuilt for an AI-first world," said Roshan Subudhi, SVP and Head of Global Markets- Intelligent Enterprise Platforms at Cognizant. "By combining Agentic AI capabilities and our Oracle Fusion expertise, we're not just modernizing systems — we're helping SITA reimagine how finance, procurement and supply chain teams work together, so the business can move faster and make smarter decisions at scale."

About Cognizant

Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is an AI builder and technology services provider, building the bridge between AI investment and enterprise value by building full-stack AI solutions for our clients. Our deep industry, process and engineering expertise enables us to build an organization's unique context into technology systems that amplify human potential, realize tangible returns and keep global enterprises ahead in a fast-changing world. See how at www.cognizant.ai or @cognizant.

For more information, contact:

U.S.
Katrina Cheung
[email protected]

Europe / APAC
Sarah Douglas
[email protected]

India
Vipin Nair
[email protected]

About SITA

SITA is the air transport industry's tech engine, making travel safer, easier, and more sustainable for everyone. From the earliest days of commercial aviation to today's digital frontiers, SITA has been there, connecting the industry and helping it evolve through every leap forward.

With around 2,500 customers, SITA technology supports over 1,000 airports and more than 19,600 aircraft worldwide. It also helps over 70 governments strike the balance between secure borders and seamless journeys. Behind the scenes, SITA bridges 45–50% of the industry's data exchange, enabling a highly complex global network to operate smoothly and reliably, every step of the way.

SITA is transforming fast. From advanced self-service and operations control to airport design and digital borders, it is shaping the next generation of travel through key acquisitions like Materna IPS, ASISTIM, and CCM. It is also expanding beyond aviation with initiatives such as SmartSea, bringing its trusted technologies to cruise, rail, and urban air mobility.

This transformation is about more than new products. SITA is investing in the right skills, tools, and partnerships to help the industry move with greater intelligence and agility, bringing together smart systems, seamless data, and sustainable innovation. Because as global travel surges, flow is everything.

As part of its bold climate strategy, SITA is cutting emissions by 4.2% each year and targeting net zero by 2050. SITA's science-based targets are validated by the SBTi, and its growing portfolio is helping customers reduce their own carbon footprints too.

Owned by the industry and driven by its needs, SITA operates in more than 200 countries and territories.

www.sita.aero

For more information, contact:
Charles Font
[email protected]

SOURCE Cognizant Technology Solutions

Arbitrum is introducing a new market-building protocol, functionSPACE, aimed at enabling developers to create sophisticated markets centered around measurable outcomes. This expansion offers a way to integrate prediction, forecasting, and settlement features directly into decentralized applications, moving beyond standalone exchanges.

New Economic Primitive Launches on ArbitrumfunctionSPACE positions itself as an economic primitive designed for pricing outcomes based on numerical values. The protocol supports the creation of markets around numbers, letting users express opinions using binary (yes-or-no) choices, numerical ranges, lines, or tailored payoff structures. This approach expands the traditional binary structure of prediction markets into formats accommodating continuous data.

According to the functionSPACE team, developers can embed these prediction markets seamlessly inside wallets, DeFi platforms, exchanges, and other applications. This integration allows users to interact with outcome markets within familiar interfaces, eliminating the need to register with separate trading platforms. Additionally, functionSPACE’s shared liquidity model enables a single market to operate across multiple interfaces, reducing fragmentation and allowing for broader participation.

functionSPACE has outlined that its infrastructure lets developers bring complex, outcome-driven markets directly into applications, stating that a single liquidity pool prices all numerical outcomes, which can streamline settlement and enhance access for both traders and product builders.

This model could streamline market participation for end users and improve capital efficiency for developers, especially as market mechanics become more programmable and embedded into products used daily.

Arbitrum Usage Data and Infrastructure PositionThe deployment of functionSPACE comes as Arbitrum positions itself as more than an Ethereum scaling solution, advancing toward being a backbone for various financial tools. In its 2026 first-half progress report, the Arbitrum Foundation highlighted that the network processed 478 million transactions in the period, while monthly stablecoin transfer volumes averaged over $70 billion. These metrics reflect the scale of Arbitrum’s ecosystem and help explain why functionSPACE is leveraging it for settlement and liquidity.

Arbitrum’s infrastructure supports application building, asset tokenization, and dedicated chains with configurable rules. Within this framework, functionSPACE utilizes a single liquidity pool to price outcome ranges, enabling automated settlement and market pricing without needing separate order books for every outcome. This setup is particularly useful for decentralized products requiring flexible, on-chain prediction or forecasting features.

In a market where a single Fed decision or a sudden altcoin listing can change everything in seconds, jumping between different apps for charts, news, and portfolio tracking is costing investors money. Smart traders are now utilizing privacy-first tools like CryptoAppsy to consolidate everything. Without even the hassle of creating an account, you get real-time charts, smart price alerts, coin-specific news, and critical macro data all on one screen.

ARB Price Reacts to Ecosystem DevelopmentsARB maintained a price near $0.20 on October 5, according to market data. The token’s market capitalization hovered around $1.4 billion, while daily trading volume surpassed $140 million. CoinGecko figures indicate ARB closed at $0.2040 on October 4, up from $0.1959 on October 2. Although this reflects recovery from early-October lows, ARB’s value remains below late-September figures.

There has been no clear evidence tying ARB’s latest price changes directly to the functionSPACE announcement. Other factors, like overall market sentiment and recent network news, have also influenced trading. For market participants, the lasting question is whether new applications like functionSPACE can turn higher network usage into ongoing economic value, instead of short-lived price shifts.

Analysts have observed that ongoing developments in Arbitrum’s ecosystem, including the introduction of programmable markets, highlight the growing importance of scalable infrastructure and could potentially drive long-term application-based growth.

Integrating Programmable Markets Into Real Use CasesImmediate users of functionSPACE include developers, traders, liquidity providers, and consumers seeking applications with embedded outcome markets. The platform is designed so that a market’s settlement is determined by the measured result, and traders’ maximum losses are limited to their initial position size. This structure is intended to lower barriers for incorporating custom, outcome-specific features into a range of decentralized products without the need for separate exchanges.

functionSPACE’s rollout is still in progress. Its current documentation notes that the protocol has launched on ARB, but actual trading remains unavailable, with a waitlist open for upcoming markets. The critical next phase will be determining whether developers integrate the protocol, liquidity expands, and measurable outcomes attract adequate activity to sustain shared markets.

If functionSPACE sees wide adoption, this could introduce a new category of programmable applications to an ecosystem that already processes significant transaction and stablecoin volumes, further broadening Arbitrum’s utility in on-chain finance.

Please see below information about transactions made under the third tranche of the 2026 share buy-back programme for Equinor ASA (OSE:EQNR, NYSE:EQNR, CEUX:EQNRO, TQEX:EQNRO).

Date on which the buy-back tranche was announced: 22 July 2026.

The duration of the buy-back tranche: 23 July to no later than 26 October 2026.

Further information on the tranche can be found in the stock market announcement on its commencement dated 22 July 2026, available here: https://newsweb.oslobors.no/message/678529

From 28 September to 2 October 2026, Equinor ASA has purchased a total of 720,335 own shares at an average price of NOK 399.9378 per share.

Overview of transactions:

DateTrading venueAggregated daily volume (number of shares)Daily weighted average share price (NOK)Total daily transaction value (NOK)     28 SeptemberOSE136,000408.046255,494,283.20 CEUX    TQEX        29 SeptemberOSE144,612397.539257,488,938.79 CEUX    TQEX        30 SeptemberOSE147,846395.692658,501,568.14 CEUX    TQEX        1 OctoberOSE147,500396.699158,513,117.25 CEUX    TQEX        2 OctoberOSE144,377402.358558,091,313.15 CEUX    TQEX        Total for the periodOSE720,335399.9378288,089,220.53 CEUX    TQEX        Previously disclosed buy-backs under the tranche OSE6,269,053394.79102,474,965,565.91CEUX   TQEX   Total6,269,053394.79102,474,965,565.91     Total buy-backs under the tranche (accumulated)OSE6,989,388395.32142,763,054,786.45CEUX   TQEX   Total6,989,388395.32142,763,054,786.45
Following completion of the above transactions, Equinor ASA owns a total of 21,624,123 own shares, corresponding to 0.90% of Equinor ASA’s share capital, including shares under Equinor’s share savings programme (excluding shares under Equinor’s share savings programme, Equinor owns a total of 10,524,363 own shares, corresponding to 0.44% of the share capital).

This is information that Equinor ASA is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation and that is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to Section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.

Appendix: An overview of all transactions made under the buy-back tranche that have been carried out during the above-mentioned time period is attached to this report and available at www.newsweb.no.

Contact details:

Investor relations
Bård Glad Pedersen, senior vice president Investor Relations,
+47 918 01 791

Media
Sissel Rinde, vice president Media Relations,
+47 412 60 584

Detailed overview of transactions

South Korean retail traders have carried their AI trade into crypto, Chainalysis data show. AI tokens became the top theme in won trading by June, with Worldcoin (WLD) drawing $7.41 billion in trading volume over the year.

The demand has helped South Korea’s crypto economy grow 12.3% to $449.1 billion, even as East Asia’s contracted modestly. Retail traders drove nearly all of that growth, while Korean banks and institutions remain largely in pilot mode.

According to the report, AI tokens’ share of won trading was 19.5 times their share of yen trading. That share also dwarfed AI tokens’ slice of euro, British pound, and Brazilian real trading.

Chainalysis tied the AI trade to Korean retail traders’ taste for high-risk, high-reward bets. On the stock market, that trade has been led by SK Hynix.

Korean AI token volumes climbed alongside the chipmaker’s shares over the same stretch, the report noted.

“By June of 2026, AI cryptocurrencies (digital assets of AI-focused projects or associated with AI infrastructure) were the single most popular thematically-defined investment category as measured by a share of won-denominated trading volume, beating out payment tokens like XRP,” the report read.

AI-linked Crypto Coins Dominating in South Korea. Source: ChainalysisFollow us on X to get the latest news as it happens

Worldcoin Leads a Crowded Field of South Korea’s AI BetsThe report names several AI tokens that drew heavy Korean trading volume over the year to June. Newcomer Sahara AI (SAHARA) contributed $3.2 billion, and Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL) added $2.7 billion.

Bio Protocol (BIO) accounted for $2 billion, while NEAR Protocol (NEAR) drew $1.7 billion. Worldcoin topped the list with $7.41 billion, more than double SAHARA’s total.

The sector also outran the broader market in September. Grayscale says AI crypto assets rose 54% that month, against 24% for the wider market. WLD remained among the sector’s leaders, Grayscale added.

Over the past month, WLD has climbed 44.28% to $0.57155, BeInCrypto Markets data show. It slipped 1.74% in the past day.

Worldcoin (WLD) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto MarketsLast week, WLD added 15% while most crypto assets slipped, BeInCrypto reported. Santiment did not tie that move to a specific catalyst. Even after the run, WLD trades about 95% below its $11.74 record from March 2024.

Slower Unlocks Meet Korea’s 2027 Crypto TaxGrayscale values the AI crypto sector at about $15 billion, the smallest of its six crypto sectors. From that small base, head of research Zach Pandl sees room for major winners within five years.

That outlook, combined with continued Korean demand, could act as a tailwind for WLD. The supply side has also eased. World said in April that daily WLD unlocks would fall 43% from July 24 to about 2.9 million tokens. 

However, a new tax could test the demand side. South Korea plans a 22% tax on crypto gains from January 2027, though lawmakers have delayed it before.

Korean traders also rotate quickly. Chainalysis found that 2025’s leading AI tokens, including VIRTUAL and KAITO, have already given way to WLD and SAHARA.

Both the tax decision and that rotation could shape whether Korean traders keep WLD at the top of their AI token list.

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The new terminal will support the long-term development of tourism in Okinawa, strengthen regional connectivity, and enhance the guest experience.

NAHA, OKINAWA, Japan, /PRNewswire/ -- Naha Port Authority, Cruise Port Naha G.K., Royal Caribbean Group and MSC Cruises celebrated the groundbreaking of a new cruise terminal at Naha Port, marking a significant milestone in the continued growth of cruising in Japan and across the East Asia region.

From left, Preston Carnahan, vice president, Destination Development, Royal Caribbean Group; Hon. Genta Koja, Governor of Okinawa Prefecture, president, Naha Port Authority; Oliviero Morelli, president, Japan, Korea, and South East Asia, Cruise Division of MSC Group; Javier Rodriguez Sanchez, vice president, Business Development, Ports & Destinations, CTL Maritime Cruise Port Naha G.K. is a joint venture between CTL Maritime and RCL Cruises Ltd., representing the respective interests of MSC Cruises and Royal Caribbean Group. Under the Cruise Hub Formation Agreement concluded with the Naha Port Authority in August 2026, Cruise Port Naha G.K. will develop and operate the new terminal, with completion and the start of operations targeted for March 2028.

The new terminal will provide modern, purpose-built facilities designed to enhance the guest experience, improve operational efficiency, and support the long-term growth of cruise tourism in Okinawa.

As one of Japan's most strategically located ports, Naha offers year-round accessibility and serves as an ideal gateway for cruise itineraries throughout the region. Once completed, the new terminal will provide enhanced passenger facilities, strengthening the port's ability to accommodate some of the most advanced cruise ships in the world, thereby supporting increased passenger capacity and growing demand for cruise vacations in Asia.   

"For Royal Caribbean Group, Japan is one of the most important cruise markets in Asia - not only as a destination, but as a long-term partner in our global business. We do not simply bring guests here, we also invest here and with Naha Okinawa, we are investing in infrastructure that will benefit the local community for years to come," said Jason Liberty, chairman and CEO of Royal Caribbean Group. "The future of cruising in Japan is about shared ambition, collaboration, and responsible innovation, and we are honored to be a part of it."

"Okinawa is uniquely positioned at the crossroads of some of Asia's most exciting cruise destinations, and we see real potential for its future," said Pierfrancesco Vago, Executive Chairman, MSC Group, Cruises Division. "This project forms part of our long-term vision to expand our presence in the region and create new opportunities for guests of MSC Cruises and Explora Journeys to enjoy Asia year-round. As we continue to develop our itineraries and invest in infrastructure, we are making cruising more accessible for both international and Asian travellers while strengthening connections across the region. We are proud to partner with Royal Caribbean Group and the Naha Port Authority in bringing this vision to life, and I thank all those whose commitment, collaboration and shared ambition have made today's milestone possible. Together, we are investing not only in a port, but in the future growth of cruise tourism in Okinawa and across Asia."

The project follows Naha Port's designation by Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism as an International Cruise Ship Hub Formation Port in 2019 and represents an important public-private collaboration to support the long-term development of tourism in Okinawa.

Today's groundbreaking included a traditional Japanese ceremony at the future terminal site, marking the formal start of construction and bringing together several esteemed public officials for the event, including Okinawa Governor Genta Koja and representatives from the Cabinet Office of Japan, alongside representatives from Naha Port Authority, Cruise Port Naha G.K., MSC Cruises and Royal Caribbean Group.

About Royal Caribbean Group
Royal Caribbean Group is a leading global vacation company spanning cruise, one-of-a-kind destinations, and land-based vacation experiences. The company operates 71 ships sailing to more than 1,000 destinations across all seven continents through its three wholly owned brands - Royal Caribbean, Celebrity Cruises, and Silversea - and a 50% joint venture interest in TUI Cruises, which operates the Mein Schiff and Hapag-Lloyd brands.

The Group is expanding its portfolio of private destinations through its Perfect Day and Royal Beach Club collections, and the company will enter river cruising in 2027 with Celebrity River Cruises. Powered by innovative brands, advanced technology, and an industry-leading loyalty program, the company has built a connected vacation ecosystem, turning the vacation of a lifetime into a lifetime of vacations. 

Named to the Fortune World's Most Admired Companies 2026 list and to Forbes' 2026 Best American Companies lists, Royal Caribbean Group is guided by its mission to deliver the best vacations responsibly. For more information, visit royalcaribbeangroup.com.

About MSC Cruises
Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the privately-owned MSC Cruises is the world's third largest cruise line and the market leader in Europe with a strong and growing presence in North America. A global cruise brand with 23 modern ships offering cruises across five continents, guests can visit more than 100 countries worldwide with more than 300 destinations, making unforgettable memories and enjoying the finest hospitality. For more information visit MSC Cruises.

SOURCE Royal Caribbean Group

Shenzhen, China--(Newsfile Corp. - October 5, 2026) - Huawei and Qualcomm today announced a multi-year, broad patent license agreement that includes cross licenses to the companies' patent portfolios across a range of technology fields, including 5G, compute, AI, and networking, together with Qualcomm's purchase of certain Huawei U.S. patents in the areas of compute, AI, networking, and other technologies. This transaction will close following receipt of the necessary regulatory approvals. The agreement reflects the companies' shared commitment to intellectual property rights and to licensing practices consistent with fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) principles.

"Huawei's decades of sustained investment in fundamental R&D have driven innovation and progress in mobile communications and other technology fields. Huawei's broad contributions to the 4G/5G standards, such as the near-physical-limit signal transmission technology using polar codes, have established Huawei's leadership in the mobile communications industry, and continuously transformed the way people communicate and live," said Alan Fan, Huawei's Chief Intellectual Property Officer. "This agreement not only demonstrates the value of Huawei's innovations, but also recognizes Qualcomm's foundational contributions to modern communication technologies."

"Qualcomm has invested in foundational wireless technologies that have enabled successive generations of mobile innovation and earned broad recognition across the global wireless industry. This agreement reaffirms industry recognition of Qualcomm's 5G technology leadership and the success of Qualcomm's 5G SEP licensing program," said John Han, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Qualcomm Technology Licensing. "This agreement likewise reflects Qualcomm's recognition of Huawei's continued innovation and intellectual property in 5G and other technology fields."

Hashtag: #Huawei

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About Qualcomm

Qualcomm is a global computing leader at the center of the AI era, enabling intelligence to scale from the most personal devices to large-scale infrastructure. Building on more than four decades of innovation, we develop platforms and solutions that bring together advanced AI, high-performance low power computing, and industry-leading connectivity--powering products and services used around the world. At Qualcomm, we are engineering human progress.

Qualcomm Incorporated includes our licensing business, QTL, and the vast majority of our patent portfolio. Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, operates, along with its subsidiaries, substantially all of our engineering and research and development functions and substantially all of our products and services businesses, including our QCT semiconductor business. Snapdragon and Qualcomm branded products are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. Qualcomm patents are licensed by Qualcomm Incorporated. Qualcomm, Snapdragon, Qualcomm Dragonwing and Qualcomm Dragonfly are trademarks or registered trademarks of Qualcomm Incorporated.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/317379

Source: Media OutReach

Demand for Basic AI Skills Fell 25% This Year as Companies Look for People Who Can Build With AI, Not Just Prompt It

Meanwhile, the Usual Ways People Grow at Work, Like Promotions and Moves to New Internal Roles, Are Stalling

, /PRNewswire/ -- Workday, Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY), the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance, and IT, today released its October 2026 Global Workforce Report, revealing most business leaders do not expect artificial intelligence to shrink their workforce. Instead, they expect it to change the jobs people already have, but many workers say they aren't getting the help they need to keep up.

The report found that 40% of business leaders expect AI to help them get more out of the employees they already have, while just 28% expect it to reduce headcount. At the same time, the usual ways people grow at work are stalling. Moves to new roles inside the same company fell at 57% of employers, promotions stayed flat, and nearly 4 in 10 employees said their company went through a reorganization or restructuring in the past year.

"Employees may not be changing jobs, but their jobs are changing around them," said Phil Willburn, vice president, people systems, intelligence & support, Workday. "Leaders need to be honest about what's different and give people a way to keep up."

Basic AI Skills Are Already Losing Value

The clearest sign of how fast things are moving shows up in job postings. Analyzing skills data on job requisitions across over 550 employers using Workday Recruiting, demand for basic AI skills, like simple prompting, rose through late 2025, peaked in January 2026, and then fell 25% over the following months. Meanwhile, demand for hands-on skills like building AI tools, automating workflows, and AI engineering rose steadily, climbing 51% between September 2025 and July 2026. Companies have moved on from wanting people who can just use AI to wanting people who can build with it.

Workers are trying to keep pace. In a September 2026 survey of 6,000 full-time employees, 79% of workers said they know what skills they need to succeed, but only 66% said their employer actually helps them develop those skills — a 13-point gap between what employees know they need and the support they're getting. Confidence is high, with 65% saying they're confident they can learn new skills if asked to. In Workday's August AI@Work Pulse survey of 5,944 workers, 62% of those who use AI for nearly all their work said they think it will make their current skills less valuable. Still, more than three-quarters (76%) of those heavy AI users said they expect it to open up new career opportunities.

Making matters harder, job requisition data from companies using Workday Recruiting show companies asking for less of the very skills that would help workers through this shift: mentions of management and leadership skills fell 7% and training skills fell 13% between Sept. 2025 and July 2026.

Fewer Ways Up Inside, More Competition Outside

Moving to a new role inside the same company is getting harder. Internal moves fell at 57% of employers year over year, and promotion rates worldwide stayed essentially flat. According to the global survey, employees trying to move internally most often pointed to hiring being paused for the role, managers who didn't support the move, and selection processes that didn't feel fair. About half of employees didn't even try to move internally last year, and of those, 27% said they simply didn't see an attractive opportunity inside their company.

That's pushing people to look outside instead, and they're not looking alone: 84% of job seekers said they used AI during their search, according to Workday's AI@Work Pulse survey. The median number of applicants for each job that gets filled climbed to 69, up from 58 a year earlier, a possible consequence of AI making it easier for people to apply to more jobs at once. But that extra volume didn't slow hiring down either. The time it takes to fill a role held steady at about 60 days, because more applications don't necessarily mean more qualified candidates. Competition is especially fierce in two industries: the number of applicants per job that gets filled rose 27% year over year in financial services and 40% in technology and media. More than half of applicants in each sector, 53% and 57% respectively, said AI increased how many roles they applied to. More applications aren't translating into faster hiring. Employers said roles mostly stay open because candidates lack the right skills or because pay, location, or flexibility don't line up with what people want.

"The question isn't just whether someone has done the exact job before," Willburn said. "It's whether they can learn fast enough to solve the next problem."

Employees Are Staying, But They're Less Likely to Recommend Their Employer

Because switching companies feels riskier in a slow labor market, employees are staying where they are. Voluntary turnover sits at roughly 16% a year, and about 70% of employees are still with the same company two years later. But Workday's data suggests staying isn't the same as being happy.

Across every industry analyzed, employees who plan to stay are less likely to recommend their employer to others, a gap that reaches 11 points in the public sector. A lot of people plan to stay in their jobs, but fewer of them would tell a friend to come work there. That's a sign of caution, not commitment. Many workers appear to be sticking with the uncertainty they already know rather than risk something new.

"There's a lot of quiet unease in the workplace right now," Willburn said. "Staying isn't the same as buying in, and companies that treat it that way will pay for it in productivity."

About the Report

This report draws on several sources. Figures on internal moves, promotions, turnover and retention come from de-identified workforce data inside companies that use Workday's HR software, limited to active customers with at least 250 employees and matched year-over-year. Figures on what leaders expect from AI, and on employees' confidence and support in learning new skills, come from a global survey of 6,001 employees and business leaders, including about 1,780 decision-makers. Figures on how workers use AI in their jobs and job searches come from a separate Workday survey of 5,944 workers (AI@Work Pulse). Figures on skills demand in job postings are based on the de-identified skills data across roughly 550 enterprise employers using Workday Recruiting from September 2025 through July 2026. For more details, read the full methodology at the end of the report.

For More Information

Read the full October 2026 Global Workforce Report. Get an economic analysis of the data. Discover five key takeaways from the research. Learn more about the immense transformation happening inside companies. About Workday

Workday operates at the heart of the enterprise – HR, finance, and IT – where the margin for error is effectively zero. By tightly coupling AI with the context, guardrails, and trusted processes that run the business, Workday goes beyond AI that assists with work to agents that are capable of driving measurable outcomes. More than 11,500 organizations worldwide, including more than 65% of the Fortune 500, trust Workday to deliver. For more information about Workday, visit workday.com.

© 2026 Workday, Inc. All rights reserved. Workday and the Workday logo are trademarks of Workday, Inc. All other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, statements regarding Workday's plans, beliefs, and expectations. These forward-looking statements are based only on currently available information and our current beliefs, expectations, and assumptions. Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to inherent risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict and many of which are outside of our control. If the risks materialize, assumptions prove incorrect, or we experience unexpected changes in circumstances, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements, and therefore you should not rely on any forward-looking statements. Risks include, but are not limited to, risks described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including our most recent report on Form 10-Q or Form 10-K and other reports that we have filed and will file with the SEC from time to time, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. Workday assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release, except as required by law.

Any unreleased services, features, or functions referenced in this document, our website, or other press releases or public statements that are not currently available are subject to change at Workday's discretion and may not be delivered as planned or at all. Customers who purchase Workday services should make their purchase decisions based upon services, features, and functions that are currently available.

SOURCE Workday Inc.

The Pound-Dollar could strengthen if dovish Fed remarks further reduce rate hike expectations, while improving risk appetite may also support Sterling. The Pound US Dollar (GBP/USD) exchange rate fluctuated on Monday amid a shifting market mood.

At the time of writing, GBP/USD was trading at $1.3226, down marginally on the day but up from an earlier low of $1.3192.

Latest — Exchange Rates:

Pound to Dollar (GBP/USD): 1.320765 (-0.24%)

Euro to Dollar (EUR/USD): 1.120491 (-0.42%)

Dollar to Yen (USD/JPY): 158.05779 (+0.13%)

DAILY RECAP:

The US Dollar (USD) initially strengthened as markets opened at the start of the week, as a risk-off mood boosted demand for the safe-haven currency.

Sentiment soured amid the ongoing crisis in the Middle East, with shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz virtually grinding to a halt on Monday following attacks in the vicinity over the weekend.

However, the mood improved as the session unfolded. Markets took encouragement from the recent sharp repricing in Federal Reserve interest rate bets, following Friday’s weak payrolls data.

This pullback in Fed bets also weighed directly on the US Dollar, seeing it quickly trim its initial gains.

Meanwhile, the increasingly risk-sensitive Pound (GBP) slipped against the US Dollar during the early hours of Monday morning amid the risk-off market mood.

Sterling was able to regain lost ground later on, however, thanks in part to the UK’s final services PMI. September’s survey was revised slightly higher, printing at 52.1 versus the preliminary 51.7. Although this was still a slowdown from August’s 52.5, the better-than-expected figures aided GBP.

Near-Term GBP/USD Forecast: Fed Speeches to Dent the Dollar? Looking forward, two Federal Reserve officials are due to speak on Tuesday – Michelle Bowman and John Williams. Both policymakers are considered to be on the dovish end of the spectrum, so their comments could dent USD, if they suggest that they won’t support an interest rate hike this month.

Meanwhile, the data calendar for GBP is quiet, which may limit movement in the Pound.

Market risk appetite may also influence the GBP/USD exchange rate. A risk-off mood would likely support the safe-haven Dollar, while an improvement in market sentiment could underpin the increasingly risk-sensitive Pound. Any shifts in risk appetite could also drive fresh volatility.

Exchange Rates UK Research Our currency coverage draws on live market data, official economic releases and published bank research.