Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

When Mark Zuckerberg walked into a Los Angeles courtroom on 18 February flanked by an entourage bedecked in Meta Ray-Bans, some people laughed. If this was an attempt at product placement for the company’s newest range of smart glasses, it was jarringly ill-judged: Zuckerberg was about to testify before a jury in a landmark lawsuit that sought to prove that Instagram and YouTube are addictive by design, and he had passed a throng of bereaved parents on his way into the courthouse. But the prosecution team, led by Mark Lanier, were not laughing.

This was a serious trial. For the first time, the most powerful names in social media were being held to account for the inherent design of their platforms, rather than the content hosted on them. They were accused of deliberately and maliciously building products that keep children hooked, with disastrous consequences for the mental wellbeing of young people. It was a landmark case – a big tobacco moment for big tech.

But there were specific reasons why the prosecution was deeply disturbed to see Meta Ray-Bans in court. “We had fought hard for an anonymous jury. We didn’t want the names disclosed in a way where Google could go pull up their Gmails, where Meta could go pull up their Facebook accounts,” Lanier tells me in his warm Texas drawl. “Then Zuckerberg shows up with security guards wearing Meta glasses. They can easily do facial identification and figure out exactly who the jurors are.” This was not product placement, Lanier says – it was the deployment of the most relentless form of digital surveillance the world has ever known.

The prosecution appealed to the judge, pointing out that Zuckerberg’s entourage was breaking rules that forbade cameras in the courtroom. “The judge made them swear that they hadn’t taken any pictures.” Lanier says. “And then they took the glasses off.”

The case of KGM v Meta et al was always going to be as hi-tech as it was high stakes. KGM – also known by her first name, Kaley – claimed that an addiction to social media that had begun with YouTube at age six and Instagram at age nine had caused her to develop body dysmorphia, anxiety and depression. (Snapchat and TikTok, named in Kaley’s original complaint, had settled out of court for an undisclosed sum before the trial began.) Lanier’s team had to convince the jury that Meta and Google had engineered their products to be addictive. It was a test case that could blaze a trail for thousands more to come.

“I’d never been in court before,” Kaley, now 20, tells me in her first newspaper interview. “Seeing all those people, and having all their eyes on me, was very overwhelming.”

Mark Zuckerberg arrives at the Los Angeles court with two members of his entourage, who are wearing Meta glasses. Photograph: Jill Connelly/Getty ImagesLanier knew this was a case like no other – and that his opponents were prepared to use every power at their disposal to win it, including artificial intelligence. Google and Meta have their own AIs: Gemini and Meta AI, respectively. Lanier was determined to beat them at their own game. (A self-described “AI zealot”, his firm employs a team of five whose sole responsibility is to produce a weekly report for him on advances in AI over the previous seven days.) Lanier asked a company called BoodleBox to make him a bespoke AI incorporating a combination of Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT and other existing models. He used it in “30 different ways” for Kaley’s case, he says, but when he tells me about just one of them, my jaw drops.

The jury might have been anonymous, but the legal teams were able to gather a significant amount of data about each member during jury selection, Lanier explains. “We have questionnaires they filled out that tell us their age, their gender, their occupational history, their family status. But it gives us more insight: it asks, who are three people you most admire and why? Who are three you least admire and why? How do you feel about this or that on a scale of one to 10?” Armed with a dossier of information, Lanier’s AI created models of every juror, “a demographic and psychological exemplar” of each one that allowed him to try out potential arguments on individual members. At the end of each day in court, he would feed the transcripts to his AI shadow jury and ask questions. What did juror number 11 think of the witness? What did juror number seven think was important? Where did juror number three get confused? “Pretty cool,” he grins.

AI can be used for good or abused for evil, Lanier says – just like litigation, which he has been practising for 42 years, or religious faith, which guides everything he does. A devout Christian, Lanier believes he is on a divine mission to take on companies that enrich themselves by exploiting the vulnerable.

“The opposing side had unlimited resources. They had dozens of lawyers in the courtroom. To call it a David versus Goliath storyline is maybe giving too much credit to David, but it’s the best descriptor I can give,” he says; the disparity between him and his opponents was even larger than the biggest mismatch in biblical history. “This was a righteous case, without a doubt. It was a holy war.”

Lanier with his daughters Rachel (on left) and Sarah (right), who worked with him on the case, on the steps of the courthouse. Photograph: Ted Soqui/EPA/ShutterstockOn 25 March, when the (real, human) jury returned its verdict, Lanier stood on the steps of the courthouse alongside two of his five children – daughters Sarah and Rachel, who worked with him on the case – and hailed “a righteous moment”. The jury had found Google and Meta liable on all counts and had awarded Kaley $6m: $3m in compensatory damages and an extra $3m in punitive damages, because Meta and Google were found to have “acted with malice, oppression or fraud”. Meta will shoulder 70% of the bill, with Google picking up the rest. But these damages are only the beginning: more than 2,000 similar lawsuits are now being brought against social media companies, accused of harming the mental health of children with products that are addictive by design, using the legal route Lanier proved viable in Kaley’s case.

Ever since they stood behind Trump at his second inauguration, the power of the tech titans has seemed ever more unassailable. (Lanier tells me big tech now hires one lobbyist for every six members of the 441-strong US House of Representatives.) But Kaley’s legal victory is a reckoning – one that could threaten the entire social media business model.

“Politicians will never hold these people accountable. The only thing they fear is a jury,” Lanier says. “I get 12 ordinary people, and they’re empowered. And when they hear that evidence and they take their oath seriously – bam! – they can do something.”

I meet Lanier in Yarnton Manor, a grade II-listed estate in Oxfordshire, built in 1611 by Sir Thomas Spencer, a distant ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales. He lounges on a teal sofa in one of the wood-panelled rooms, sometimes with a leg dangling over the sofa’s arm, sometimes hugging one of the velvet cushions, often leaning forward to gesticulate in animated ­excitement as he shares a biblical reference or damning piece of trial evidence. It’s a swelteringly hot day in late May, and Lanier, 65, flew in from Houston yesterday, but he looks fresh as a daisy. He only needs four hours’ sleep a night. “Sleep’s a bonus, but not one that’s necessary.”

Lanier’s charitable foundation bought Yarnton in 2021 and turned it into a centre for religious study. He preaches in a Baptist church every Sunday; he has another study centre in Houston. “In the US at least, Christian faith has a bad reputation of being vibrant only among uneducated, unenlightened, bigoted, narrow-minded people. Those of us who hold on to a faith are responsible for trying to bring out the good that can come from it – not the holier-than-thou stuff that seeds division,” he says. “I’m a lawyer who has funded all of this by trying to grab hold of people whose conduct has been destructive.” He draws a rectangle in the air above his head, tracing the corners of the ornate coved ceiling. “It was the Johnson & Johnson case that bought this,” he grins. “My wife and I call this the J&J Manor House.”

Before he took on Google and Meta, Lanier was involved in some of the most high-profile landmark litigation cases in the history of big pharma. In 2018, he won $4.69bn (reduced on appeal to $2.12bn) for 22 women with ovarian cancer and their families after Johnson & Johnson failed to warn them of the carcinogenic risk associated with the talc in their Baby Powder. Natural talc is often mined within close proximity of carcinogenic asbestos; Lanier argued that Johnson & Johnson had known this for decades without warning the public. (Johnson & Johnson said in 2018: “J&J’s baby powder is safe and does not cause cancer. Studies of tens of thousands of women and thousands of men show that talc does not cause cancer or asbestos-related disease.”) In 2019, he won an 11th-hour $260m settlement from opioid manufacturers and distributors on the eve of what would have been the first federal trial in the history of the opioid epidemic.

Lanier’s “bread and butter”, he says, involves ubiquitous, household-name products that can cause serious harms, which the companies behind them know about but choose not to act on. “Normally, I want an eye-popping verdict that causes Wall Street to recoil and causes in-house lawyers to lose their jobs and companies to respond differently,” Lanier told a podcast recently.

When he began his career, at a big Houston law firm, he just liked winning. He learned the psychological skills and rhetorical techniques that helped him excel in court: how to make things memorable, how to read a room and change the energy in it, “how to make word choices that will trigger visceral reactions, how to use story to bypass people’s natural defences”. But after five years of straight wins, he lost – in a case where he knew his client was in the wrong. Licking his wounds on the drive home, he had an epiphany. “I thought, what am I doing? Did I almost take my gifts, my talents, my skills and wield an injustice?” Aged 29, Lanier started his own firm so he could pick what he considered to be “righteous” cases. “You can do horrible things with this power, or you can do good.”

Lanier estimates that settlements from drug companies following his landmark opioid litigation are now in excess of $10bn. His victory in the Johnson & Johnson case opened the floodgates to tens of thousands of claims from people with cancer and their families – including one currently in the high court of England and Wales, with more than 7,000 claimants. J&J deny the allegations.

In the wake of Kaley’s win against Google and Meta, the former Facebook employee turned whistleblower Frances Haugen claimed that Meta could be on the hook for $1tn in future damages from tens of thousands of people who have been harmed by the use of their platforms as children. This might be an overestimation, Lanier says. “But tens of billions, easy. Part of it also is: are they willing to make real change? Reasonable change is something that a lot of us would put a high value on.”

At the time of the Johnson & Johnson verdict, Lanier remarked that suing in an initial test case with only a small cluster of plaintiffs allowed him to maximise the emotional impact of claimants’ stories on the jury. “It’s easier to get justice in small groups,” he said. “In small groups, people have names, but in large groups, they’re numbers.”

Kaley was a lone plaintiff, and a reluctant trailblazer. It was her mother who brought her case to the attention of lawyers. (Kaley was identified only as KGM in court because the alleged harms took place when she was a child.)

“I was really scared,” Kaley tells me in a video call; she has chosen to keep her camera switched off. “I had a lot of anxiety around the thought of them deleting my accounts as a punishment. And that did end up happening, at least with Snapchat.”

There’s a duality to the way Kaley speaks: giving evidence in the trial has prepared her to be able to answer difficult questions about the most challenging parts of her life, and that, combined with her low voice, can make her sound older than her 20 years. But her responses are often brief and staccato, and she sometimes struggles to find the right words, like a teenager.

Brought up by a single mother in Chico, California, along with an older brother and sister, Kaley grew up with learning disabilities, in a household without much disposable income. By the time she was nine, she had uploaded hundreds of videos to YouTube, and soon had dozens of accounts on both YouTube and Instagram. “I liked that I could post my own stuff and see how many likes I got. I liked being able to see what my friends were up to.” When Kaley wasn’t posting, she was scrolling. She stopped engaging with her family. She no longer left her home. Once, she spent more than 16 hours on Instagram in a single day.

“I was on it every day from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed. I was on my phone during class – I would get in trouble, I got bad grades because I was not paying attention.” She was terrified at the thought of anything happening to her phone. “If I was walking next to a lake or something, I’d be so scared that I was going to drop my phone and lose my social media.”

Her mother tried to intervene, activating screen time limits or confiscating Kaley’s phone altogether. “But I would freak out,” Kaley says. “I had withdrawal symptoms. It was just so hard to do anything else.” She would get up in the middle of the night to search for her phone, or “beg and beg and cry” until she got it back. When her mother removed Instagram from Kaley’s phone, Kaley sneaked a hand-me-down phone from her older sister so she could download the app again without her mother knowing.

Almost as soon as she joined Instagram, Kaley started playing with filters, enlarging her eyes, shortening her nose. “I’d take a selfie with a filter on, and then see myself – how I actually looked – and I would just feel really ugly,” she says. “It made me get all these new insecurities, and to see myself in a way that others didn’t actually see me.” Aged 10, Kaley started to cut herself. She went on to be diagnosed with depression, anxiety and clinical body dysmorphia.

Lanier didn’t want Kaley to sit through the entire trial. She gets easily distracted, he says; plus, it was his job to convince the jury that she had been seriously harmed by Google and Meta’s products. He didn’t want her to come away from it believing she was irredeemably damaged.

Delivering his opening statement, Lanier stacked three wooden ABC toy blocks on top of each other. “I thought, I will tell the jury this case is as simple as ABC – Addicting the Brains of Children,” he explains. “There’s a principle in psychology and learning called cognitive ease: we automatically assign credibility to the things we more easily understand. There’s a principle in rhetoric: the power of threes. Threes just seem to resonate within our soul and minds. ABC, one, two, three.” (In his opening statement at the Johnson & Johnson trial, Lanier used ABC Scrabble tiles to impress upon the jury that “Asbestos, Breathed or internalised, causes Cancer”.)

Then Meta lawyer Paul Schmidt delivered his opening statement, pushing back. “Was it Instagram or other causes?” he asked. He told the jury the root of Kaley’s mental health issues lay in her chaotic upbringing; that her home life and learning disabilities meant these problems would be inherent in her life anyway. Lanier bats away this idea. “Just because someone has a headache doesn’t give you the right to bash them over the head with a rock and say, ‘They already had a headache! Don’t blame me!’”

Lanier was not allowed to respond to the defendants’ opening statement in court. But as he walked out of the courthouse that day, he spoke to the throngs of media waiting there. “The next morning we get to court, and the bad guys want to have a discussion with the judge off the record.” In the judge’s chambers, he says, Meta’s team complained that Lanier’s rebuttal to their opening statement was being widely reported in the press, and called on the judge to prevent him from speaking to journalists.

Once again, Lanier deployed the power of three. “I said, ‘First of all, I didn’t do it in court – I’m on the sidewalk outside. Second of all, you’ve instructed the jury not to read any of the media. Third of all, the defendants in this case are social media. They’re producing press releases! They’re putting posts on Instagram!” (While the trial was ongoing, Meta had worked hard to spread the message that the company took the welfare of young people seriously, both on their own platforms and in their wider communications with the public.) “It makes my little comment on the courthouse sidewalk pale in comparison.’” Meta’s lawyers ultimately backed down. “The judge said, ‘You do realise there are four billboards up around the courthouse with your ads on them talking about how you care for children in all you do – and you’re complaining about Mr Lanier?’”

Lanier photographed in the library of Yarnton Manor, Oxfordshire. Photograph: Gareth Iwan Jones/The GuardianThe bereaved families outside the courthouse each day – some waving placards that read “We are KGM” – wanted the wider context of Kaley’s struggles to be recognised. But the defendants had argued that Lanier should not be allowed to mention other young people who had suffered harm as a consequence of social media use. “They wanted to make her the exception,” he says. “The sad part is, we’ve got a generation of Kaleys. Go to a restaurant and look how many people are sitting there in her age range like this …” He takes his phone from the coffee table and hunches over it. “It’s such a waste of human capital. All to make money flow to a handful of rich white guys who want to run the world.”

Parents buy the phones those kids are hunched over, I say. Shouldn’t they be able to establish and maintain ground rules? Lanier smiles. “It’s very naive to think that we have such awesome parents in this world that they can stand up against the trillion-dollar companies – with their algorithms and their deceitful tools – and be well enough informed to fight the most aggressive technology in the history of human civilisation. Kids get on YouTube at school. Kids go over to their friends’ houses. Kids have lunch with other kids. Does parenting make a difference? Of course it does. Can parents beat the machine? No way.”

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Lanier was also not allowed to talk about the content hosted on social media; in the eyes of the law, YouTube and Instagram are not publishers, so are not responsible for the content they host. “But the content is part of what they use to addict you.” Imagine going into a bookshop and idly picking up a book from one of the display tables, he says, only to see every book on every table change to be something statistically proven to be interesting to people drawn to that kind of book – including some that might shock, enrage or titillate you. Touch another title, and all the books change again, as the bookshop narrows down your interests as effectively as it can. Unlike bookshops, the social media algorithms want you to browse for ever.

“The algorithms are amoral – they’re machines. They’re relentless. You’ll never find them wavering, or low on energy, or distracted. And their entire design is to try to keep your attention on their platform. They are scary.”

Meta and Google were damned by their own documents: the millions of pages of evidence the judge required them to hand over, and a few others leaked by whistleblowers. “Through the industrious hard work of a lot of young lawyers reading, and the industrious hard work of AI, we were able to find the lines of gold.” Lanier says it was an embarrassment of riches.

Internal documents showed the companies had deliberately sought out “casino science” to turn their products into what Lanier calls “addiction machines”. Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok all use intermittent variable rewards, giving their users little unpredictable dopamine hits, just like slot machines with their micro-payouts that keep you sticking around for a big jackpot that may never arrive, endlessly scrolling on your phone instead of pulling a handle. A 2012 Google memo about YouTube said its “goal is not viewership; it’s viewer addiction”. Another document from Google referred to its products as “slot machines”. “These are attention casinos,” it read. “The house always wins.”

There were documents from Google and Meta revealing the “dark patterns” they deploy to manipulate their users’ behaviour. Take the features Kaley’s mother wanted to use to protect her daughter: they were not easy to find, and were switched off by default. “You’ve got to determine there’s a protective feature, go find it and toggle it on,” says Lanier. “The toggle itself is subject to dark patterns: people will toggle differently if there’s a blue dot when you toggle, versus if it doesn’t change colour.”

This makes me think of my own efforts to control my Instagram feed, by toggling the button requesting that it doesn’t show me suggested content. I have to go into my settings and toggle it again every 30 days, and given that it doesn’t change colour, I’m never really sure that it has worked. “It’s insidious,” Lanier says. “And let’s say, as a parent, you do this for your kid. Did you set a calendar reminder to go back to your kid’s phone 30 days later when it defaults back?” Even if you were organised enough to do this, he adds, the platforms change their settings so often that it’s impossible to keep up.

There was a Meta document from 2018 that read: “If we want to win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens”; a YouTube slideshow featuring children as young as four and the suggestion that parents could use the platform as a “digital babysitter”; a 2019 research report commissioned by Meta that found teens had “an addicts’ narrative about their Instagram use”, and that “they wish they could spend less time caring about it”.

Then there was the testimony given on the stand. In a memorable exchange with Lanier, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said that 16 hours a day on the platform might be “problematic”, but he would not call it an addiction. “You can call it problematic use. You can call it tweedledee,” Lanier says. “The issue wasn’t the magic word ‘addiction’ – it was the harm.”

But the prosecution had to prove that Kaley’s use of social media caused the harm done to her mental health, and that was a challenge. “Social media companies have seeded the literature with stuff that says their product’s beneficial. For decades, big tobacco said, ‘Tobacco doesn’t really cause lung cancer – look at all these studies!’ And what you didn’t know is big tobacco had ghostwritten them or funded them,” Lanier says. A psychiatrist and a therapist both testified that, in Kaley’s case, her body dysmorphia was caused by her social media use. “The other side argued it was the residuals of bad parenting.” The sad part, Lanier says, is that Meta’s own documents show they know that when adolescent girls from low socioeconomic backgrounds with existing mental health challenges spend extended periods on social media, their mental health deteriorates.

When Zuckerberg took the stand – the first time he had testified in front of a jury – Lanier put it to him that he “saw dollar signs written on the backs” of vulnerable kids. He presented Zuckerberg with an internal document, which showed that, in 2015, a third of all 10- to 12-year-olds in the US used Instagram, even though under-13s were not supposed to have accounts, and an email from an executive that said, “Mark has decided the top priority for the company is teens.” Zuckerberg said this was no longer the way the company operated, and that he had worked for years to address “problematic use” of his platforms “because it’s the right thing to do”.

At the end of questioning, six prosecution lawyers unrolled a 50ft-wide collage of some of the hundreds of selfies Kaley had posted on Instagram. Urging Zuckerberg to look at the heavily filtered images, Lanier asked him if Meta had ever investigated Kaley’s account for problematic use. Zuckerberg did not answer.

Lanier had planned to question YouTube CEO Neal Mohan on the stand, but ran out of time – the judge had given the prosecution only 43 hours to try the case. “I decided I didn’t need him,” Lanier says. But Google is just as culpable as Meta in Kaley’s case, he adds. “YouTube was a gateway drug.”

Time pressure was one of the reasons why they decided to settle with Snapchat and TikTok before the case came to trial. “I could have hit a good verdict against them,” Lanier says, a little wistfully. He planned to compare the safety features that are present in the Chinese version of TikTok and that aren’t present in its international platform: a limit on night-time use, no infinite scroll, mandatory time-outs once users have been on the app for a certain amount of time, and the deployment of AI to determine if users are children, “based upon factors including what you’re looking at, the size of your finger when you’re scrolling, how fast you scroll. There are tons of ways that they are required to be safer over there.”

Google claimed that the entire case misunderstood YouTube; that it is a streaming platform, not a social media site. “You have an ability to message, to like or dislike, to comment, to follow. It’s not just media – it’s social media,” Lanier declares. But just in case that argument wasn’t enough, the prosecution team asked Google’s very own AI what it thought. Gemini’s response was unequivocal – YouTube is social media.

On hearing the verdict, Kaley’s overriding feeling was relief – for herself, and for all the people who can now follow her. “I knew it meant that other cases would get to go to court, so I was feeling happy for the other families.” The thousands of cases that were poised to be brought against social media companies should she win have now been set in motion. She hasn’t received any damages yet; Google and Meta are appealing, and Lanier says the process will take seven years. “However long it takes is however long it takes,” Kaley says. “I’m OK with it.” Despite her ongoing struggles with her self-image, Kaley’s victory has helped her recognise the contribution she can make to the world, and how much people value her.

Should the case end up at the supreme court, Lanier doesn’t think that the politically appointed judges will be swayed by seeing this as a partisan issue. “It crosses the political aisle. Typically, Republicans are friendly to big business in the US, but some of the most stalwart folks on this are Republicans. It matters to anybody who’s a parent.”

Photograph: Gareth Iwan Jones/The GuardianIn the meantime, Lanier is helping other legal teams who are bringing cases against social media companies, while his firm is fielding new inquiries from people who say they have been harmed by compulsive social media use. “Those that have legitimate cases that I can do, I’ll represent. It’s got to be a child that was addicted. We’ve got to have some counselling or psychiatric records. If it wasn’t bad enough to go see a professional, then it’s not bad enough to bring a case. Within the framework of that, I’ll take those cases.”

Why does the focus have to be on kids? “Children’s brains are still developing, and the last part to develop is that ability for self-control that sees future consequences. With adults, it’s going to be hard to win. The jury’s going to think, You’re an adult, you ought to be able to weigh the consequences,” Lanier replies. “The problem is, once you get addicted, addictive pathways are easily transferable to other addictions. The child who’s addicted to social media can easily become addicted to pornography, sex, gambling, pills. Your body’s ultimately just craving the dopamine.”

Of course, Lanier will not be the lead lawyer on the thousands of new cases being brought against Google, Meta, Snapchat, TikTok and other social media companies. He is clearly very good at what he does, with the skills to win against giants in big pharma as well as big tech. I wonder whether his trailblazing victory for Kaley can be replicated in other courtrooms, by other lawyers.

“That’s a fair question,” Lanier replies. “Embedded in it is a kind of compliment – so thank you, that’s kind. Does the skill of the lawyer make a difference in these cases? Yes, it does. Am I the only lawyer who can win these? Absolutely not. I’m not necessary – but I’m useful.”

In June, Keir Starmer announced a social media ban for under-16s, due to take effect in early 2027, after nine out of 10 respondents to a government survey supported it. Lanier thinks Starmer’s plans are “brilliant. It eats away at the fabric of our society if children have access to materials that they are not mature enough to handle.”

“I think it’s the first step in the right direction,” Kaley says. “But kids are sneaky and they might still find a way to get back on it.”

Some who oppose the ban – including the campaigner Ian Russell, whose 14-year-old daughter, Molly, took her own life after being deluged with suicide and self-harm content – say the only way to protect children is to force social media companies to change their business models, which rely on addictive features and algorithmically driven content. Litigation may be the only way to bring those changes, Kaley says. “They’re only going to change if somebody forces them to.”

Lanier’s firm is now working on a claim against OpenAI brought by bereaved parents who say ChatGPT was instrumental in their son’s suicide. He also has a forthcoming suit against Roblox, the most popular online game platform among eight- to 14-year-olds in the UK. “It’s a breeding ground for child exploitation, a forum that allows child predators to thrive and to connect,” he says. The addictive features of the platform will be part of that case, too.

Kaley tells me she has no idea what the future holds for her. She is still on social media, in the places that haven’t banished her in retaliation for taking legal action against them. She still posts selfies and videos; she thinks she always will, even though she hopes not to one day. “It’s very difficult.”

Lanier is considering writing a book about Kaley’s case. A documentary might be in the works. He has already starred as himself in a movie, the 2011 Chris Evans film Puncture (released as Injustice in the UK). It tells the true story of Michael Weiss, the Houston-based lawyer behind a class-action lawsuit against hospital syringe distributors in the US; after Weiss died from a drugs overdose in 1999, Lanier took on the case and won a landmark settlement in 2004.

Lanier is the first to admit that, in the past at least, he loved attention. “When I was a younger man, probably the quickest way to get hurt was to get between me and a camera,” he says, a twinkle in his eye. Perhaps that’s why, despite everything he has learned, Lanier is still on Instagram.

“I do a video thought for the day, five days a week, based on some biblical idea. They get posted on there for distribution and availability,” he says when I bring this up. “I’m not someone who thinks that social media is inherently evil. It’s like any tool: it can be used for good and it can be used for evil.”

His 15-year-old granddaughter watches his videos, he tells me. So how does Lanier see the future for her, and his 11 other grandchildren? Is the digital world going to be safer for them following Kaley’s victory?

“The optimist in me says yes. The realist in me says not so fast.” He leans forward. “Mark Zuckerberg has immense power, and power is as addictive as any drug. Do we really think that he’s going to readily abandon a portion of his power? The realist in me says this is going to be a war that will last my lifetime – and the lifetime of others.”

In the UK, the youth suicide charity Papyrus can be contacted on 0800 068 4141 or email [email protected], and in the UK and Ireland Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123. In the US, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is at 988 or chat for support. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Meta Platforms (META +6.16%) is one of the big spenders in the artificial intelligence (AI) race. Its capital expenditures in 2026 will total between $125 billion and $145 billion. At the midpoint, that estimate would be 88% higher than last year's figure.

However, investors have reason to be skeptical that this will result in a meaningful payoff.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who currently has a net worth of $231 billion, admitted that the company's AI bets "haven't come to fruition yet." He said that during an internal town hall on July 2, Reuters reported.

The social media stock dipped 5% that day, although it's up 19% in the month of July (as of July 10).

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Not living up to the hype Meta has been one of the fastest companies to commit fully to AI. Earlier this year, the business laid off 8,000 employees, translating to 10% of its workforce. It also moved 7,000 people into different AI roles. One of the goals was to develop and implement AI agents throughout the organization, an objective that so far has failed to live up to expectations.

Zuckerberg said notable progress should be made in the coming months. But based on the immediate negative share-price reaction, investors were less enthusiastic.

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The slow AI headway is giving shareholders flashbacks to late 2021, when the business changed its name from Facebook to Meta Platforms. The company believed that the metaverse would replace mobile internet as the next major computing platform, a strategic pivot that Meta has since scaled back.

Investors haven't been pleased with Reality Labs' financial performance. This segment of Meta posted a cumulative operating loss of $77 billion during the five-year period from the start of 2021 through 2025. But this dollar figure is peanuts compared to the money being allocated to AI.

Zuck's gamble makes sense With a world-class advertising platform and 3.56 billion daily active users across its family of apps, Meta aims to leverage AI not only to boost engagement and drive higher ad revenue, but to also bring personal superintelligence to everyone around the world. This gives the business a different position than its hyperscaler peers, which largely sell AI and other computing capabilities to enterprise clients.

Meta's huge AI spending makes sense, since the company wants to lead the AI revolution from an individual's perspective. However, Zuckerberg's comments about AI progress being slow have three implications for the broader AI secular trend.

It's almost impossible to precisely measure early results from AI implementation, even for a dominant technology business. Worries about AI agents replacing jobs appear to be overblown right now. And no one has any idea what the ultimate payoff will be from the unprecedented AI spending taking place.

It has certainly been a case of the Mondays for Monday.com (MNDY 1.44%) this year, as the stock is down more than 40% in 2026.

The work operating system company has been caught up in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) downturn, and investors sold the company off hard in February after it projected that its Q1 2026 revenue would come up just short of analyst expectations. It actually beat those original analyst revenue estimates by a wide margin ($342.9 million) when it reported its Q1 results in May, and it also raised its full-year guidance. This helped the stock rebound off its lows, but it is still down more that 70% in the past year.

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AI fears loom Monday.com's sell-off this year has largely been driven by fears that artificial intelligence (AI) would disrupt its business model. The company is largely a visual interface that helps customers automate workflow tasks. One of its advantages is that it's a drag-and-drag tool that doesn't require technical expertise to set up. And while the company has introduced AI tools, including AI agents and even a vibe (AI-assisted) coding tool, investors fear that similar tools will replace it.

The company's growth remains strong, with its Q1 revenue climbing 24% to $351.3 million. Its growth was led by existing customers, with net dollar retention at 110%. Any number above 100% represents growth from clients who have been customers for at least a year after churn. Meanwhile, net dollar retention among larger clients was even more robust, at 114% for customers with more than 10 users and 116% for customers with annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $50,000 or more.

Looking ahead, the company forecast Q2 revenue of $338 million to $340 million, representing 18% to 19% growth. It projected full-year revenue of between $1.466 million and $1.474 million, above its prior guidance of $1.452 billion and $1.462 billion.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Monday.com continues to deliver solid revenue growth, and its AI solutions, especially Monday Vibe, are performing well. Meanwhile, the sell-off has left the stock incredibly cheap. It now trades at a price-to-sales (P/S) ratio below 3 times and a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio below 19 times, for a company still projected to grow revenue by nearly 20%.

An investment in Monday.com comes down to the core SaaS debate. Will organizations just build it themselves, or do they still value the updates, security, maintenance, and compliance that come with getting it from dedicated providers? Organizations have always been able to develop their own software, and AI makes it easier, but is the cost worth it? I have serious doubts, and as such, think the stock is a buy at these depressed levels.

For a while now, Nvidia (NVDA +3.90%) CEO Jensen Huang has been making a point that runs counter to the usual AI hype. The bottleneck in building out artificial intelligence, he argues, isn't just chips, it's the electricians, pipefitters, and grid crews needed to raise the data centers, fabs, and power lines those chips depend on. He's gone so far as to suggest skilled tradespeople could become a new class of high earners. That thesis has a very real corporate beneficiary, and its backlog just told the story.

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Why Quanta Services sits at the center of the build-out Quanta Services (PWR 1.52%) is a specialty contractor that strings transmission lines, builds substations, and wires interconnections that enable a hyperscaler to power a new campus. When Quanta reported earlier this year, its total backlog, essentially the work already signed and waiting to be done, reached a record of $48.5 billion. Management frames the longer-term opportunity as a $2.4 trillion addressable market through 2030, driven by aging grids, new power generation, and the enormous electricity loads that AI facilities represent.

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The moat most investors overlook: Quanta trains its own workforce Here's the angle I find more interesting than the backlog figure itself. If labor is the true constraint on the AI build-out, then the company that controls its own labor supply holds a quiet advantage. Quanta does exactly that. It owns Northwest Lineman College, which trains thousands of pre-apprentices, apprentices, and journey-level line workers every year, and it runs its own advanced training centers to develop crews across its service lines.

Image source: Getty Images.

That matters because you cannot conjure a journeyman lineworker overnight; the training takes years. While competitors bid against each other for the same scarce workers, Quanta is busy manufacturing them, then deploying them on its own projects. In a market where nearly every contractor tells investors the limit is people rather than demand, owning the pipeline of skilled hands is a genuine, durable edge.

None of this makes Quanta a sure thing. The same labor shortage that helps it can also cap how fast it grows, since even Quanta can only train and retain so many workers at once. Large infrastructure projects can slip or be delayed, backlog is a signal of future work rather than guaranteed profit, and heavy reliance on utility and data-center customers ties Quanta's fortunes to their spending plans. The stock has also climbed sharply, which leaves less room for error if results ever disappoint.

The takeaway for investors Quanta Services is one of the clearest ways to invest in the physical side of the AI story -- the concrete, copper, and cooling behind Huang's vision -- without betting on which chipmaker wins. The record backlog confirms that demand is real, and the company's control over its skilled workforce is the kind of advantage that's hard for rivals to quickly replicate. For investors who believe the trades are about to have their moment, this is a name worth studying, provided you're comfortable buying after a strong run.

AbbVie (ABBV 0.73%) is listed as a Dividend King, but in fairness, it has only been a stand-alone company since it was spun off from Abbott (ABT 0.46%) at the start of 2013. AbbVie hasn't been around for the 50 years required to qualify as a Dividend King; instead, it has inherited Abbott's track record. Still, it has increased its dividend annually since the spin-off.

So the real story is what AbbVie has been doing to maintain its place among the Dividend Kings. The most recent answer to that is to agree to buy Apogee Therapeutics (APGE +0.06%). Here's why that's so important for the future.

Image source: Getty Images.

AbbVie has a strong portfolio, for now AbbVie has a strong portfolio of drugs. Biologics are a big part of its business, with Humira, Skyrizi, and Rinvoq all notable products. The interesting thing about this trio is that Humira lost patent protection in 2023, leading to a decline in its revenues. But Skyrizi and Rinvoq are newer drugs and helping to pick up the slack. This is how the pharmaceutical sector works: companies like AbbVie are always on the lookout for new drugs to replace older ones that will eventually lose patent protection.

The purchase of Apogee Theraputics brings with it a number of attractive drug candidates. AbbVie highlighted zumilokibart, a late-stage drug for atopic dermatitis, in its release. This is a core therapeutic area for AbbVie. But the release also noted Apogree's pipeline of drugs in the respiratory space, which could help to build AbbVie's presence in this area.

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Simply put, this $10.9 billion deal highlights AbbVie's ability to support its drug pipeline, which is what will allow it to maintain its Dividend King status over time. What's interesting here, and sets AbbVie apart from most of its competitors, is that the company also makes Botox, which was an acquired product as well. Botox is off-patent, but it has an important brand name in the cosmetic space. That gives the company a consistent revenue stream, which is unusual in the drug space. And it makes Botox a good example of AbbVie's ability to make strong acquisitions.

Is AbbVie a dynasty in the making? Some of the world's best-known drug companies have been in business for over 100 years. AbbVie obviously isn't at that point yet. However, the Apogee Therapeutics acquisition shows, again, why it can compete with much older drug-makers. With an attractive 2.7% dividend yield, AbbVie is a worthwhile deep dive for conservative dividend lovers who think in decades.

James Kihara, Principal Accounting Officer of Acadia Pharmaceuticals (ACAD 0.72%), disclosed the sale of 11,421 shares of common stock in an open-market transaction on June 26, 2026, according to the SEC Form 4 filing.

Transaction summaryMetricValueShares sold (direct)11,421Transaction value~$298,000Post-transaction shares (direct)13,088Post-transaction value (direct ownership)~$331,000Transaction value based on SEC Form 4 weighted average price ($26.08); post-transaction value based on June 26, 2026 market close price.

Key questionsHow does this transaction compare to prior open-market sales by James Kihara?
This 11,421-share sale is Kihara's largest single open-market sale on record, exceeding his previous sale on May 26, 2026 (5,401 shares), and surpassing the five-trade average of approximately 4,964 shares per sale.What proportion of Kihara's available direct shareholding was involved in this sale?
The transaction represented 46.60% of his direct holdings prior to the sale, a significant reduction that left only 13,088 shares directly held post-transaction.Were any derivative or indirect holdings involved in this disposition?
No derivative securities or indirect entities were involved; all shares sold were directly owned common stock, and no options or trust-held shares were reported in this filing.Does the cadence or scale of this sale reflect a change in disposition strategy?
Recent filings indicate an acceleration in selling as Kihara’s holdings have declined, with increasing sale sizes explained by the drawdown in available capacity rather than a discretionary slow-down or escalation.Company overviewMetricValueEmployees653Revenue (TTM)$1.10 billionNet income (TTM)$375.65 million1-year price change23.96%*1-year price change calculated as of June 26, 2026.

Company snapshotCore product: NUPLAZID (pimavanserin) for Parkinson's disease psychosis; pipeline includes late-stage candidates for Alzheimer's disease psychosis, Rett syndrome, and pain management.Revenue is primarily generated through the commercialization of proprietary therapeutics for central nervous system (CNS) disorders, with additional growth potential from clinical-stage assets.Target customers include neurologists, psychiatrists, and healthcare providers treating CNS disorders, with a focus on patients experiencing unmet medical needs.Acadia Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company specializing in the discovery, development, and commercialization of innovative treatments for central nervous system disorders.

The company leverages its expertise in neuroscience to address significant gaps in the treatment landscape, with a marketed product and several late-stage pipeline candidates. Acadia’s strategic focus on high-need indications and a robust clinical pipeline position it as a differentiated player within the biotechnology sector.

What this transaction means for investorsThe June 26 sale of Acadia Pharmaceuticals stock by Principal Accounting Officer James Kihara is noteworthy for investors because it represented a substantial disposition of 46.6% of his holdings. The transaction came at a time when Acadia shares were soaring on the news that the European Medicines Agency recommended the company’s Daybue drug be allowed for sale in the European Union.

Kihara’s trade was at a weighted average price of $26.08 per share, close to the 52-week high of $28.35. While it seems he was capitalizing on the rising price, his sale was a non-discretionary transaction executed as part of a pre-established Rule 10b5-1 plan, adopted in December of 2025. Such plans enable insiders to sell shares at predetermined times to avoid concerns of trading on non-public information.

Even so, the fact that he disposed of nearly half his direct holdings is concerning, especially since the sale was about double his average transaction size. However, Acadia’s business is doing well. It kicked off 2026 with $268.1 million in first-quarter revenue, up from the prior year’s $244.3 million.

Robert Izquierdo has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Constellation Energy (CEG +0.26%) is an independent power producer. That said, it is also one of the largest nuclear power providers in the United States. When nuclear power was all the rage among investors, the stock's price rallied, and its price-to-earnings ratio skyrocketed to nearly 50x. That wasn't a realistic valuation for the business, but the subsequent stock decline has changed the math. Here's what you need to know.

Constellation Energy gets better and cheaper The big story with Constellation Energy is that it sells power outside of the regulated framework. That means it can ink deals directly with customers at market rates. Notably, it recently agreed to sell nuclear power to Meta (META +6.16%) under a 20-year contract, helping to support that technology giant's AI ambitions. However, it also just penned a nuclear power deal with Walmart (WMT +1.51%), supporting the world's largest retailer's goal of increasing its use of clean energy.

Image source: Getty Images.

The Meta deal came during a period when anything related to nuclear power was a hot commodity on Wall Street. But that enthusiasm has waned, leading to a deep price decline. Constellation Energy's P/E ratio is now a far more reasonable 21x. Only the Walmart deal shows that AI isn't the only growth driver, a fact further supported by the company's purchase of Calpine, which expanded its footprint in the natural gas power space.

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At this point, Constellation Energy is helping to solve the AI power crunch and doing a whole lot more, as well. What's important to recall is that AI's power demand is part of what is driving overall electricity demand. Notably, electricity demand increased by 10% between 2005 and 2025 and is expected to increase by 60% between 2025 and 2045. This isn't an industry-specific event, and Constellation Energy has created a business that can benefit from the big picture changes taking shape, not just artificial intelligence.

Not cheap, but still attractive To be fair, with a 21x P/E ratio, it would be hard to call Constellation Energy cheap. That said, the average utility stock has a P/E ratio of about 20x, so Constellation isn't exactly expensive, either. And its ability to sign long-term contracts at market rates, unlike regulated utilities, gives it more growth appeal. If you are looking for a way to benefit from AI's demand crunch, now is the time to give Constellation Energy a second look.

Reuben Gregg Brewer has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Constellation Energy, Meta Platforms, and Walmart. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Archer Aviation (ACHR 2.47%) has made meaningful progress over the past year. The company is advancing toward FAA certification, building out manufacturing capacity, and still expects to begin commercial operations in 2026. But there are still challenges.

Archer's biggest challenge at the moment is that it still generates very little revenue. During the first quarter of 2026, the company clocked just $1.6 million in sales while posting an adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) loss of $172.5 million. Management expects another adjusted EBITDA loss of $170 million to $200 million in the second quarter.

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To be sure, those losses aren't surprising for a pre-commercial aerospace company. It's actually to be expected. The problem is that commercialization is proving slower and more expensive than many expected, and some investors are starting to grow impatient.

Fortunately, Archer ended the first quarter with approximately $1.8 billion in liquidity, giving it one of the stronger balance sheets in the electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) industry. But Wall Street expects the company to burn roughly $600 million this year and another $740 million in 2027 before free cash flow potentially turns positive later in the decade. Indeed, this is the kind of thing that can frustrate already-impatient shareholders, even if the company does boast a rather large war chest.

Certify this! Every milestone Archer achieves still depends on regulatory approval, too. And until the FAA certifies the Midnight aircraft (the company's all-electric air taxi), the company cannot begin large-scale commercial operations in the United States. Even if certification arrives on schedule, Archer Aviation still has to ramp up manufacturing, expand charging infrastructure, train pilots, and prove there is enough customer demand to support its business model.

Meanwhile, competition is not going gently into that good night. Rival Joby Aviation continues to make progress toward commercialization, while a handful of other aerospace companies and start-ups are pursuing the same urban air mobility market. And while Archer benefits from partnerships with some major players, including Stellantis and United Airlines, the commercial eVTOL industry remains largely unproven.

Of course, none of this means Archer is destined to fail. In fact, the company has arguably become one of the industry's strongest players. Its manufacturing partnership with Stellantis, sizable cash position, and continued certification progress give it advantages that many of its competitors lack.

Image source: Getty Images.

Even so, price matters. And today, investors are still paying for a business that has yet to generate meaningful commercial revenue and will likely continue consuming hundreds of millions of dollars before becoming self-sustaining. That's a risky combination, particularly if certification timelines slip or commercialization takes longer than expected.

Ultimately, this is not a stock I would rush out to buy, even after it's lost more than 60% of its value over the past year and trades at what some believe to be attractive levels. The truth is, until Archer demonstrates that it can transition from a development-stage company into a profitable commercial aircraft manufacturer, I'd remain on the sidelines.

And if you already own the stock, you have to decide whether it's worth sticking it out for another year or two and hoping for the best instead of allocating that capital to much more attractive investment opportunities with far less risk and far more upside potential.

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

© Photo by Scott Olson / Getty Images

The headline number is not a forecast or a promise. It is what Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM | XOM Price Prediction) has already put through the register across the past two fiscal years, and it explains why the market is willing to pay nearly 23-times trailing earnings for a business tied to a commodity that just fell 21.2% in a single month.

The Number ExxonMobil generated $52 billion in operating cash flow in fiscal year 2025, on top of $55 billion in fiscal 2024. That two-year haul is the cash flow story amounts to the total the title refers to, and it is a reported figure straight out of the company’s audited statement of cash flows, not guidance and not consensus. Free cash flow for 2025 landed at $23.61 billion after $28.36 billion in capital expenditures.

What It Means Operationally, that cash paid for everything at once. ExxonMobil returned $17.23 billion in dividends and completed $20.27 billion in share repurchases in 2025, while lifting capex 19.30% year over year to fund growth in Guyana, the Permian, and Golden Pass LNG. Exxon’s dividend has now been raised annually for 43 consecutive years, with management raising its payout in Q4 2025 by 4%.

Underneath the top line, the business is leaner than it was. Cumulative structural cost savings since 2019 reached $15.60 billion, against a $20 billion target by 2030. Advantaged assets (Permian, Guyana, LNG) accounted for 59% of 2025 production, up roughly 7 percentage points year over year. Full-year upstream production hit 4.7 million oil-equivalent barrels per day, the highest in more than 40 years.

Exxon’s Q1 2026 report showed the same engine still running. Adjusted EPS came in at $1.16 versus a $1.01 consensus, and underlying earnings ex-items were $8.77 billion against $7.58 billion a year earlier. Reported net income of $4.18 billion was distorted by $3.88 billion in unfavorable mark-to-market derivative timing and $706 million in Middle East supply-disruption losses.

Market Reaction XOM stock closed at $137.09 on July 2, 2026, up 15.45% year to date and 27.36% over the trailing twelve months. Over five years the stock is up 160.87%. The last month has been softer, with shares off 8.34% as WTI slid from a June 3 print of $99.76 to $71.87 on June 29.

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Bull Case I think Exxon’s bull case rests on the durability of that cash engine at prices well below where it was minted. ExxonMobil has committed to $20 billion in buybacks in 2026, with cash capex guided to $27 billion to $29 billion. The company already put $4.9 billion of buybacks through in Q1 2026 alone.

Growth capacity is measurable. Guyana ran at a record above 900,000 gross barrels per day, Permian output hit a Q4 2025 record of 1.8 million boed, and Golden Pass LNG loaded its first Train 1 cargo in April 2026. CEO Darren Woods told analysts that Train 1 alone will lift US LNG exports by “about 5% relative to 2025 US exports” and, once all three trains are online, by roughly 15%.

Overall, I think the important thing to note is that this company’s balance sheet backs the plan, with debt to equity at 0.168, net debt to EBITDA of 0.548, and interest coverage of 56.28x.

Bottom Line For long-term holders, ExxonMobil is delivering the two things retirement-focused investors care about: a 3.03% yield backed by 43 straight years of dividend growth, and a buyback program funded out of cash the business actually earned. Exxon’s Q2 2026 dividend of $1.03 per share was payable June 10, 2026 to holders of record on May 15, 2026.

With WTI back near $71.87 and a $170.29 average analyst target sitting above the current price, the next test is whether Q2 earnings show the underlying earnings line holding up while the derivative and Middle East items fade. That is where the cash flow story either extends, or stalls.

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Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Less than a year ago, NuScale Power (SMR +0.11%) was the poster child of the artificial intelligence (AI) energy craze. The nuclear energy stock catapulted to an all-time high of $57.42 on Oct. 16, 2025.

The rally, however, fizzled out even faster than it built up, with NuScale shares slumping 61% in just the last quarter of 2025 and failing to recover since. The stock has now fallen 75% in one year and is trading below $10 as of this writing.

Make no mistake: The AI power narrative isn't hype. AI data centers consume astronomical amounts of power, putting immense pressure on existing grids. This has forced governments and corporations to seek reliable, low-carbon energy alternatives to meet their growing power needs without abandoning their carbon-emission goals.

Yet NuScale became a victim of its own circumstances. A perfect storm of weak operational numbers, class action lawsuits, and its largest shareholder, Fluor, cashing out after the stock's rally sent the stock crashing.

That said, what NuScale is building holds solid potential to fill the global energy gap. Does that make the nuclear energy stock a bargain buy under $10, or is it still a value trap?

Image source: Getty Images.

What exactly does NuScale Power do? Let's first understand what NuScale's business is.

Founded in 2007, NuScale is developing small modular reactors (SMRs). They are designed to be simpler, safer, more scalable, and more cost-effective than traditional nuclear reactors. SMRs are also largely factory-built, which means shorter construction and installation times.

Its core patent is the Nuclear Power Module (NPM). Each individual module is a self-contained reactor capable of generating 77 megawatts electric of carbon-free electricity. Several NPMs can be grouped together to build a power plant that can then be installed virtually anywhere that requires round-the-clock, reliable energy, such as data centers.

NuScale's SMR design is already approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the company has advanced from the research and development stage and has started production of the first modules.

So why is the seemingly promising nuclear energy crashing? There are three problems here.

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Where's the customer? The core thesis of buying NuScale is that tech giants and utilities will buy its modules and reactors and lock in several years of contracts. The company, however, hasn't yet entered into any binding contract with any customer to deliver NPMs.

Payment milestones, but no revenue NuScale has signed ENTRA1 as its exclusive global partner to develop and commercialize power plants using NPMs, but ENTRA1 hasn't yet signed any binding power purchase agreements. Moreover, NuScale is bound to pay ENTRA1 milestone fees for each NPM or NuScale product that could be used in a power plant. There's no revenue guarantee here, and this bizarre arrangement has even prompted several investor class action lawsuits.

Nothing concrete before 2030 Even with all the design and regulatory approvals, NuScale doesn't expect to deliver its first NPMs before 2031. That's if there aren't any delays or complications in design, development, and production.

I'd steer clear of NuScale Power stock, even at under $10 per share, until the company can prove its technology is commercially viable.

© inray27 / Shutterstock.com

$2.6 trillion. That is what Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) is worth as of July 2, 2026, sitting on 10.76 billion shares at a closing price of $242.67. The figure is a market cap, not a reported financial.

What makes this the number to watch is what is happening underneath the hood. Indeed, the parts of Amazon growing fastest are now the ones with the highest margins, and the empire built on retail is being repriced as an artificial intelligence infrastructure business.

What It Means Behind Amazon’s $2.6 trillion valuation is a Q1 2026 report that changed the growth math. Revenue landed at $181.52 billion, up 16.61% year over year. Earnings per share came in at $2.78 against a $1.653 estimate, a 68.18% beat and the fifth consecutive EPS beat. Investors should note that net income of $30.25 billion included $16.8 billion in pre-tax gains from Anthropic holdings, a non-recurring item. The cleaner read is operating income of $23.85 billion, up 29.6% year over year, with the corporate operating margin at 13.1%.

On the horizon, I think the real repricing catalyst is AWS. Cloud revenue reached $37.59 billion, growing 28%, the fastest pace in 15 quarters, at an operating margin of 37.7%. Amazon’s chips business (Graviton, Trainium, Nitro) crossed a $20 billion annual run rate at triple-digit year-over-year growth. Advertising services generated $17.24 billion in the quarter, up 24%, and now runs at a trailing rate above $70 billion. Unit growth in stores hit 15%, the highest reading since the end of COVID lockdowns.

Market Reaction Shares of AMZN stock are up 6.9% over the past week and 5.13% year to date, but down 5.4% over the past month. The stock closed at $259.67 the day the Q1 earnings report was filed on April 29, 2026, ran to $271.17 one week later, then cooled to today’s $242.67. Over one year the stock is up 10.34%, and over ten years it is up 568.81%.

Bull Case The bull case is that Amazon is being paid like a mature retailer while operating like a growth infrastructure company. At 32 trailing earnings and 31 forward earnings, the multiple sits alongside quarterly earnings growth of 74.8% and return on equity of 24.3%. Operating cash flow rose 52.99% year over year to $26.03 billion. International operating income grew 40% year over year, and North America’s operating margin expanded to 7.9% from 6.3%.

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The company’s AI backlog is the piece long-term holders should focus on. AWS has locked in roughly 2 gigawatts of Trainium capacity for OpenAI through 2027 and up to 5 gigawatts for Anthropic, with Meta also on the customer list. Amazon Bedrock processed more tokens in Q1 than in all prior years combined, and customer spend on Bedrock grew 170% quarter over quarter.

CEO Andy Jassy framed it plainly: “We’re in the middle of some of the biggest inflections of our lifetime, we’re well positioned to lead, and I’m very optimistic about what’s ahead for our customers and Amazon.”

Analyst positioning matches the setup. Of the analysts covering the name, 15 rate it Strong Buy, 47 Buy, 4 Hold, and none Sell, with a consensus target of $312.99.

Bottom Line The $2.61 trillion price tag is only heavy if AWS decelerates – right now it is doing the opposite. Amazon guided Q2 2026 revenue to $194 billion to $199 billion, or 16% to 19% growth, with operating income of $20 billion to $24 billion against a year-ago figure of $19.2 billion.

That guidance assumes Prime Day falls in Q2 2026. The near-term catalysts on the calendar (Prime Day, the Q2 earnings report, and the start of a 1 million-plus NVIDIA GPU deployment in 2026) will test whether the AI infrastructure narrative can pull the multiple higher. For retirement-focused holders, the question is whether the second-largest company in America is still compounding like a growth company at a $2.61 trillion market cap. This quarter says yes.

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Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - July 11, 2026) - Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against AeroVironment, Inc. ("AeroVironment" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: AVAV) on behalf of investors that purchased or otherwise acquired AeroVironment securities between June 25, 2025 and March 10, 2026 (the "Class Period").

CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE CASE

If you are an investor in AeroVironment and have suffered losses, you may CLICK HERE to contact us. You may also contact Kaplan Fox by emailing [email protected] or by calling (646) 315-9003.

DEADLINE REMINDER: If you are a member of the proposed Class, you may move the court no later than July 27, 2026 to serve as a lead plaintiff for the purported class. If you have losses we encourage you to contact us to learn more about the lead plaintiff process. You need not seek to become a lead plaintiff in order to share in any possible recovery.

On January 20, 2026, before markets opened, the Company reported in an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that "upon mutual agreement" of AeroVironment and the U.S. Government, "the U.S. Government issued a stop work order on the Company's Other Transaction Agreement for the delivery of BADGER phased array antenna systems to support the Satellite Communication Augmentation Resource ("SCAR") program." According to the filing, "[t]he stop work order allows for the parties to negotiate an amended agreement for the future of the SCAR program under new requirements for the program, which amendment is expected to be a firm-fixed price agreement. The Company expects to continue to deliver capabilities and products for the SCAR program."

Following this news, the price of AeroVironment stock declined $61.97 per share, or 15.77%, to close at $330.89 per share on January 20, 2026.

On March 10, 2026, after market, AeroVironment issued a press release, announcing third quarter 2026 financial results. The Company reported "operating loss of $179.0 million, compared to an operating loss of $3.1 million for the same period in fiscal year 2025." According to the complaint, "[t]hese financial results reflected the impact of a $151.3 million goodwill impairment in the Company's space division after the stop work order on the Company's BADGER systems built for the SCAR program." Additionally, according to the complaint "AeroVironment also reported that the U.S. Space Force had terminated the Company's contract concerning the SCAR program, and as a result, it would have to 'recompete' for the SCAR program."

Following this news, the price of AeroVironment stock fell $13.84 per share, or 6.24%, to close at $207.73 per share on March 11, 2026.

The complaint alleges, among other things, that throughout the Class Period, "Defendants

made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) AeroVironment understated the likelihood that it would imminently face competition from other vendors for the work it performed in connection with the SCAR program and the U.S. Space Force's ongoing efforts to modernize the SCN; (ii) accordingly, Defendants overstated AeroVironment's business and financial prospects; and (iii) as a result, Defendants' public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times."

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On July 1, several media outlets reported that Meta Platforms (META +6.16%) was forming a new business unit, internally dubbed "Meta Compute", to sell its excess AI cloud capacity to third-party customers. Meta will reportedly sell both its raw GPU computing capacity and remote access to its infrastructure to companies so they can run their own AI models.

Shares of CoreWeave (CRWV 0.87%), a leading neocloud provider that provides many of the same services, have dropped nearly 11% since that news broke. Does that pullback represent a buying opportunity or a dire warning for the company's future?

Image source: Getty Images.

Why did Meta's strategic shift crush CoreWeave's stock? Meta's strategic shift surprised CoreWeave's investors, since Meta had just agreed to pay CoreWeave $21 billion through 2032 for its neocloud services this April. Meta also struck a similar multi-billion dollar deal with another neocloud company, Nebius (NBIS +1.60%).

Therefore, it might initially seem odd for Meta to sell its own cloud computing power when it clearly needs it. Meta's agreements with CoreWeave and Nebius also prohibit it from reselling any of that cloud computing power, so it can only sell the excess AI cloud capacity at its own first-party data centers.

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However, Meta plans to invest up to $145 billion this year in expanding its own AI infrastructure. As it builds more data centers, some of those servers will remain idle until they're fully utilized by its social networking platforms and AI services.

To avoid wasting too much cash and energy on underutilized servers, Meta wants to rent them out to third parties -- a move that could transform it into a formidable competitor to companies like CoreWeave and Nebius. CoreWeave's other major customers, such as Jane Street and IBM (NYSE: IBM), could also eventually follow the same playbook if they decide to expand their cloud infrastructure.

On the bright side, CoreWeave's largest customer -- Microsoft (MSFT +0.15%) -- probably won't do the same thing because it's already one of the world's biggest cloud infrastructure companies. Instead, CoreWeave will continue to serve as an "overflow tank" for its cloud services.

Does the pullback represent a buying opportunity? From 2025 to 2028, analysts expect CoreWeave's revenue to surge from $5.1 billion to $40.3 billion as its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) soars from $3.1 billion to $25.7 billion. With an enterprise value of $91.2 billion, it still looks like a bargain at 7 times and 13 times this year's revenue and adjusted EBITDA, respectively.

Meta's move is alarming, but it doesn't break the bullish thesis for CoreWeave. Even if Meta sells its idle computing power to cut costs, it doesn't indicate that other companies will eagerly tether themselves to the social media giant's infrastructure. Instead, independent neocloud players like CoreWeave and Nebius should remain appealing choices as the AI market expands -- so this pullback could be a great buying opportunity.

Leo Sun has positions in Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends International Business Machines, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

AT&T (T +1.92%) isn't a stock that usually makes headlines. But lately it has been pulled into one of the market's hottest stories, SpaceX (SPCX 4.51%), and the result is a beaten-down share price and a mouth-watering dividend yield.

At about $21 as of this writing, just above its 52-week low of $19.89, AT&T's $1.11 annual dividend yields about 5.3%. Part of the reason the stock sits so low is a growing worry that SpaceX's satellite network could eventually eat into AT&T's business.

So is that fear justified? And with the yield this high, is the dividend safe? Those are the two questions that matter for income investors here.

Image source: Getty Images.

How real is the SpaceX threat? Capturing the concern weighing on the stock, Oppenheimer downgraded AT&T stock in June, pointing to SpaceX's Starlink satellites as a structural threat to the telecom's long-term broadband and wireless growth. SpaceX has been developing a direct-to-phone service, and it is reportedly plans to launch a Starlink mobile service for U.S. consumers.

That is worth taking seriously. A satellite network that can beam service straight to ordinary phones, with no cell towers required, could chip away at a traditional carrier over time.

But this threat could take years to morph into something meaningful, if it does at all.

Just how significant is the threat? Oppenheimer estimated that AT&T's fiber build could top out nearer 50 million homes rather than 60 million-plus management targets by 2030.

Those are meaningful figures, but they play out through 2030, not the next few quarters. They also sit against a business that is currently growing, not shrinking.

Here's what AT&T is actually doing right now. In the first quarter of 2026, revenue rose about 3% year over year, adjusted earnings per share climbed nearly 12%, and the company posted its best-ever first quarter for advanced connectivity internet net additions. Additionally, it ended the quarter with more than 37 million fiber locations and reaffirmed its target of 60 million by 2030 -- the very number Oppenheimer doubts it will reach. Far from being disrupted, AT&T's core businesses are among its brightest spots.

Is the yield safe? For income investors, this is the question that counts.

The good news is that the dividend looks well protected. AT&T expects to generate more than $18 billion in free cash flow this year, while its dividend costs about $8 billion. That is a payout of less than half of free cash flow -- comfortable coverage, even with the company investing heavily in its network and buying back stock. On top of the dividend, management plans about $8 billion in buybacks this year, another way it returns cash to shareholders. Measured against profit, the payout is just as comfortable: AT&T earned about $2.99 per share over the past year against a $1.11 dividend, well under half its earnings.

It's true that free cash flow dipped in the first quarter, to $2.5 billion from $3.1 billion a year earlier, as capital spending rose. That dip reflects investment in the very fiber and wireless network winning those customers, not a business in trouble. Management still expects capital spending of $23 billion to $24 billion for the year and free cash flow above $18 billion.

The valuation adds to the appeal.

AT&T trades at about 7 times trailing earnings and 9 times expected earnings -- a deep discount to the broader market, which sits in the low-to-mid 20s. That kind of multiple is normal for a no-growth telecom, yet AT&T is still growing, which makes the discount look overdone. For a profitable, cash-generative business, that is cheap.

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So, is AT&T stock oversold?

I think so. The concern is legitimate, and satellite-to-phone technology is worth watching. But it is a slow-moving, decade-long risk, and the market is arguably pricing it as if it were imminent, into a stock whose advanced connectivity internet business just posted a best-ever first quarter for net additions. For income investors who can tolerate a slow grower, a well-covered yield above 5% from a stock trading near a 52-week low looks more like an opportunity than a trap.

AT&T won't grow quickly, and I wouldn't expect much from the share price, but the dividend, at least, looks like it's on solid ground.

Costco (COST +0.36%) has never been a cheap stock. But premium businesses rarely are. The warehouse retailer has spent decades building one of the strongest business models in retail, and several long-term trends suggest it could continue rewarding shareholders well into the next decade.

Membership has its privileges The biggest advantage for Costco isn't bulk groceries or discounted televisions. It's membership. During fiscal 2025, Costco generated approximately $5.32 billion in membership fee revenue, up 10% from $4.83 billion the prior year. Even more impressive, its U.S. and Canada membership renewal rate clocked in at 92.3%, while its worldwide renewal rate was 89.8%. Those are among the highest retention rates of any subscription-based business and help explain why membership fees remain one of Costco's biggest competitive advantages.

Image source: Getty Images.

Costco's membership engine has continued to strengthen this year, too. During the third quarter of fiscal 2026, membership fee revenue climbed 10.7% year over year to $1.37 billion, outpacing overall sales growth. Paid memberships increased 4.1%, while executive memberships (the company's highest-spending customers) grew 9.6%. Worth noting: renewal rates also remained strong at 92.2% in the U.S. and Canada and 89.7% worldwide, reinforcing the stability of Costco's recurring revenue stream.

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That recurring revenue gives Costco tremendous flexibility. It can afford to sell merchandise at thinner margins than most retailers because memberships provide a reliable source of profit. That pricing advantage keeps customers coming back, creating a virtuous cycle that's difficult for competitors to replicate. Meanwhile, the company continues to expand quite rapidly.

Penetrating new markets Costco's physical footprint continues to expand alongside its membership base. As of the third quarter of fiscal 2026, the company operated 931 warehouses worldwide, including 639 in the United States and Puerto Rico. Management continues to see significant opportunity for new locations, too, particularly in international markets where warehouse clubs remain relatively underpenetrated.

Every new warehouse not only drives additional merchandise sales but also brings in thousands of new paying members, reinforcing Costco's recurring membership revenue model. At the same time, e-commerce is becoming a bigger contributor, too. For Q3 2026, the company reported digitally enabled comparable sales growth of 21.5%.

Balance sheet remains strong Costco's financial position remains one of its greatest strengths. During fiscal 2025, the company generated $13.3 billion in operating cash flow and ended the year with about $14 billion in cash and cash equivalents. That financial strength allows Costco to fund new warehouse openings, invest billions in distribution infrastructure and technology, raise its regular dividend, and continue returning capital to shareholders without placing significant strain on its balance sheet.

Of course, you can't ignore valuation. Costco trades at a premium earnings multiple compared to other retailers, leaving less room for disappointment if consumer spending weakens or growth slows.

Still, it's difficult to find many retailers with Costco's combination of recurring membership income, exceptionally loyal customers, consistent store expansion, and strong cash generation. Those advantages have allowed the company to grow through multiple economic cycles, and there's little reason to believe those competitive strengths will disappear before 2030.

The artificial intelligence narrative is fracturing right before our eyes. Over the last two years, the market has focused obsessively on centralized hyperscale training. That phase required sprawling data centers digesting trillions of parameters.

Enterprise IT departments are now discovering the hidden costs of that centralized model. Prohibitive data egress fees, latency bottlenecks, and strict data governance mandates are driving a wave of cloud repatriation. Corporate leaders want to bring their AI models in-house. They are seeking sovereign AI.

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Sovereign Territory: Bringing Proprietary Data Back HomeSuper Micro Computer Today

SMCI

Super Micro Computer

$28.31 +0.07 (+0.25%)

As of 07/10/2026 04:00 PM Eastern

52-Week Range$19.48▼

$62.36P/E Ratio14.98

Price Target$38.57

Super Micro Computer NASDAQ: SMCI is pivoting to capture this enterprise migration. The company is deploying turnkey hardware that transforms the hardware builder into a high-margin ecosystem provider.

Sovereign AI requires proprietary enterprise data to remain within tightly controlled environments rather than being processed by external cloud hyperscalers.

When a corporation trains or fine-tunes a localized model on its own private data, sending that data back and forth to a centralized public cloud incurs a significant financial burden. Cloud providers charge data egress fees every time information leaves their servers. Over time, for persistent inferencing workloads, these fees can cannibalize the return on investment.

We are watching a structural shift in the physical economy. Major consumer and industrial brands are moving away from the cloud toward localized infrastructure. As recently exemplified by Starbucks NASDAQ: SBUX, retail operators are realizing that running localized algorithms for inventory management or customer behavior modeling is more cost-effective when executed on-premise or at the network edge.

This transition creates a severe technical challenge. Historically, localized deployment required specialized on-site IT engineering teams to manage storage arrays and compute clusters. Retail stores and factory floors simply lack the physical space or engineering talent to maintain traditional server racks.

To make the shift to sovereign AI, businesses need infrastructure that acts like an appliance. They need to plug it in, turn it on, and let it run autonomously.

The Kubernetes Cure: Healing the Localized Storage HeadacheThis acceleration toward localized AI frames Super Micro Computer's recent product launch. SMCI unveiled a turnkey Kubernetes Edge AI appliance in direct collaboration with Red Hat OpenShift and Portworx. This is not another bare-metal server box, but rather a fully validated, self-healing infrastructure solution.

By utilizing Kubernetes, enterprises ensure their containerized models remain cloud-agnostic. This capability allows businesses to migrate computing power to localized clusters without fracturing their core application architecture.

SMCI is bridging the gap for companies looking to exit the cloud by offering an off-ramp that works right out of the box. Portworx provides a software-defined, aggregated local storage layer that operates autonomously. If a network outage hits a retail location, the local data platform heals itself and keeps the inferencing workloads running without requiring a frantic call to a remote IT team. The integration of Red Hat OpenShift provides the enterprise-grade management layer.

From a fundamental perspective, this appliance alters SMCI's value proposition. Commodity server hardware is inherently vulnerable to pricing wars and severe margin compression. By bundling bare-metal hardware with premium enterprise software, SMCI captures integration value that previously leaked to third-party system integrators. SMCI can defend and expand its gross margins, charging a premium for the convenience and reliability of a fully integrated edge ecosystem.

Valuation Disconnect: Buying the Artificial Intelligence DipDespite this formidable product pipeline, the market has heavily discounted SMCI. Shares have contracted by 30% over the last 30 days, pushing the trailing price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio down to just 15. Bearish sentiment has aggressively accelerated, with short interest swelling to roughly 19% of the public float. A low days-to-cover ratio of 1.2 to 1.9 indicates high liquidity, largely a residual benefit of the 10-for-1 stock split executed in October 2024.

This elevated short positioning relies heavily on the narrative that Super Micro Computer is burning through cash to secure components. The primary target of market skepticism is the $7 billion equity and equity-linked financing initiative announced in early June 2026. Critics view this capital raise as a sign of financial strain. However, a pragmatic look at the balance sheet reveals a different story.

The capital is structured to finance component procurement for an estimated $39 billion AI server order backlog. Financing a $39 billion backlog is not a sign of weakness, but instead a signal of SMCI's moat.

Competitors cannot easily replicate the capital intensity required to fulfill enterprise demand at this scale. While short sellers are betting that SMCI will struggle with margin compression and share dilution, institutional entities are accumulating shares.

The deployment of high-margin edge appliances offers the specific catalyst needed to drive upward earnings revisions. If the edge pivot succeeds in expanding net margins beyond the current 3.70%, that heavy bearish positioning could easily unravel in a short squeeze scenario.

The Forward Edge: Claiming the Throne in Localized ComputeThe underlying demand for the hardware layer of the computing supercycle remains fully intact, but the market is heavily segmented. We can see a distinct divergence in valuation multiples when comparing Super Micro Computer to legacy competitors.

Dell Technologies Today

DELL

Dell Technologies

$435.14 -15.08 (-3.35%)

As of 07/10/2026 03:59 PM Eastern

This is a fair market value price provided by Massive. Learn more.

52-Week Range$110.22▼

$469.47Dividend Yield0.58%

P/E Ratio34.56

Price Target$492.76

Dell Technologies NYSE: DELL is currently the primary competitor in the hardware server market, with shares up roughly 20% over the trailing 30 days. Dell Technologies recently raised its full-year revenue guidance on the back of $16.13 billion in optimized server revenue. The market applies a significant premium to Dell Technologies, trading at a forward P/E near 25x while yielding a recently increased dividend. Similarly, Hewlett Packard Enterprise NYSE: HPE has rebounded nicely, supported by growth in its networking segment.

SMCI is currently trading at a steep discount to these peers, presenting an intriguing dynamic. SMCI is battling formidable competition and absorbing the broader market premium, yet its engineering velocity and modular architecture provide a distinct fundamental edge.

Coupling rapid hardware deployment with validated, plug-and-play Kubernetes environments establishes a highly compelling offering for organizations executing cloud repatriation strategies. Investors might consider adding SMCI to their watchlists as the enterprise migration toward sovereign AI continues to unfold, and closely monitor the upcoming August earnings report to see whether these new high-margin edge appliances begin lifting overall profitability.

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Cerebras Systems (NASDAQ: CBRS) could see improved confidence around its OpenAI infrastructure ramp following its latest 200MW European data center capacity announcement, UBS analysts wrote, noting the expansion helps reduce execution risk around the company’s cloud and colocation ambitions.

UBS wrote that the additional European capacity provides incremental support for OpenAI’s first tranche deployment, an area where investors had expressed concerns given Cerebras’ position as a relatively new entrant to the cloud and colocation leasing market.

The firm added that the expansion increases confidence in OpenAI’s ramp while providing Cerebras with flexibility to pursue additional business opportunities as the sites come online over the next four to six quarters.

Cerebras announced plans to bring its first European data center capacity online by the end of 2026, with the full 200MW expected to be available by the end of 2027. UBS estimates the new capacity represents a meaningful increase from the company’s previously announced 150MW to 200MW of contracted capacity across projects in the U.S. and Canada.

Including the European expansion and previously disclosed infrastructure commitments, UBS estimates Cerebras now has visibility to approximately 410MW of announced contracted power capacity. Those commitments include Nautilus, Colovore, Digi Power X, WhiteFiber, Scale, and Bell’s 300MW facility announced earlier this year, which UBS assumes is split roughly evenly between Cerebras and CoreWeave.

The analysts wrote that having approximately 400MW of the 500MW required for OpenAI’s first two tranches effectively secured, assuming both are deployed through cloud infrastructure, supports confidence in the deployment timeline. UBS noted that OpenAI retains flexibility to deploy the second tranche through hardware deployments in its own data centers or through cloud partners.

UBS expects the second OpenAI tranche to ramp relatively quickly during the second half of 2027 and wrote that it would not be surprised to see additional agreements with large colocation providers over the coming quarters if deployment continues largely through Cerebras’ cloud platform.

The firm maintained its price target for Cerebras at $320, as shares traded hands up 8% at about $214.

UBS’s valuation is based on an enterprise value-to-sales multiple applied to 2029 estimates and discounted back to 2027. The firm uses an average multiple of around 9 times 2029 estimated EV-to-sales from compute peers and applies it to its $13.6 billion sales estimate, which it wrote could prove conservative as OpenAI and AWS deployments ramp.

Eli Lilly (LLY 2.30%) is in a league of its own. It's the largest healthcare company in the world by market cap, with the No. 2 company (Johnson & Johnson (JNJ 0.82%)) barely over half as big. Lilly's shares have more than quintupled in value over the last five years.

But should you buy Eli Lilly stock now? Here's my honest take.

Image source: Getty Images.

Business is booming Make no mistake about it: Lilly's business is booming. The company's revenue soared 56% year over year in the first quarter of 2026 to $19.8 billion. Its adjusted earnings per share skyrocketed 156%.

Much of this growth is due to Lilly's GLP-1 franchise. Sales for Mounjaro, which is marketed in the U.S. for treating type 2 diabetes (T2D) and for both T2D and weight loss outside the U.S., jumped 125% year over year to $8.7 billion. Sales for Zepbound, the drug's U.S. brand for weight loss, increased 80% to nearly $4.2 billion.

Those numbers are so staggering that they make it easy to overlook Lilly's other success stories. For example, sales for eczema drug Ebglyss vaulted 141% higher in Q1 to $145 million. Another autoimmune disease drug, Omvoh, generated more than twice the sales in the latest quarter ($80 million) than it did in the prior year period. Blood cancer therapy Jaypirca's sales increased 79% year over year to $165 million.

Lilly recently won U.S. regulatory approval for its new GLP-1 pill, Foundayo. Analysts expect the drug to rake in full-year sales of around $1.6 billion. RBC Capital projects peak annual sales of a whopping $36 billion.

More good news could be on the way. Lilly's pipeline features 42 programs in late-stage clinical studies. The big drugmaker's buying spree, with the acquisitions of Ajax Therapeutics, Centessa Pharmaceuticals, 4E Therapeutics, and Kelonia Therapeutics, is further bolstering its pipeline.

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The bear case against Lilly Given all those positives, it might seem like buying Lilly's shares would be a no-brainer. However, there is a bear case against Lilly that investors shouldn't ignore.

Valuation stands at the top of the list. The big pharma stock trades at 33.4 times forward earnings. Its price-to-earnings-to-growth (PEG) ratio, which factors in analysts' earnings growth projections over the next five years, is 1.57. While that isn't a ridiculously high ratio, it suggests Lilly is still priced at a premium despite its robust growth prospects.

Another issue is that Lilly's fortunes hinge significantly on its GLP-1 drugs -- and competition is intensifying. Novo Nordisk (NVO +1.25%) has a new oral version of its weight-loss drug, Wegovy, on the market. The company's CagriSema, which is in late-stage testing, could challenge Lilly's Zepbound. Amgen (AMGN 0.02%), Pfizer (PFE 0.33%), Roche (RHHBY 0.23%), and Viking Therapeutics (VKTX 5.37%) also all have promising weight-loss therapies in development.

In the meantime, Lilly has been forced to slash Mounjaro prices in China. The company cut prices to secure inclusion in China's state-run health insurance program. Speaking of China, the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on China is investigating Lilly's clinical drug trials in the country. In particular, the committee is concerned about Lilly's efforts involving Chinese military hospitals and in the Xinjiang region, where the Chinese Communist Party is accused of conducting a genocide of Uyghur Muslims.

To buy or not to buy? So, should you buy Eli Lilly stock? I have a nuanced answer.

Lilly is, without question, one of the world's best pharmaceutical companies. It's a leader in multiple markets, notably the weight-loss market, which could reach $150 billion by 2035. Despite its premium valuation and other risks, I think that this stock is a good pick for long-term investors.

However, I suspect Lilly's share price could pull back further, creating an even better buying opportunity. That's what has happened several times in the past when the stock hit a record high.

I could be wrong, though. Perhaps the best approach is to buy a partial position in Lily and add to it later (perhaps after the company reports its second-quarter results on July 30, 2026). With a long-term growth trajectory like Lilly's, easing into a full stake could be a profitable strategy.

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Ford's all-important EV pickup truck has donned camouflage during public outings. The sneaky attire includes a QR for a hidden website landing page. Ford Ford has been camouflaging its coming $30,000 EV pickup during public testing. Turns out, the going-out attire is intentionally revealing.

Photos and videos of the disguised truck have circulated widely online in recent weeks. And some of Ford's wraps have obscured the truck's body lines with a jumble of dogs, sailboats, soccer balls, heart emojis — and tiny QR codes.

Scanning one sends curious onlookers to an official Ford webpage that declares, "Congrats, You Spotted a Unicorn." There, the automaker shows clearer footage of the pickup undergoing snow testing and moving through production, while inviting visitors to sign up for updates.

"Chances are, you saw something on the road that piqued your interest, and you're here because you're curious," Alan Clarke, Ford's vice president of advanced development projects, says in a video at the top of the site. "This website will be your exclusive insight into our progress."

The camouflage is doing two jobs at once: concealing the big-bet truck's final shape and helping Ford build an audience before it officially pulls back the covers.

An EV recharge

Ford discontinued the all-electric F-150 Lightning after sales never reached the company's 150,000 unit-per-year goal.  Scott Olson/Getty Images There is plenty riding on the truck underneath.

The so-far unnamed EV (though rumors and patent applications suggest Ford may be resurrecting the Ranchero nameplate) is scheduled to reach customers next year. It's a big reset for the legendary automaker.

Around 2020, Ford had high hopes for its first generation of mass-market EVs, including the F-150 Lightning, a full-size electric pickup that started at mid-$50,000. Ahead of its launch, Ford touted nearly 200,000 reservations and set a goal of eventually building 150,000 electric trucks a year.

Sales peaked in 2024 at 33,510 vehicles, falling far short of Ford's early ambitions. The automaker ended production of the original Lightning in late 2025 and recorded $19.5 billion in charges tied to its broader EV restructuring.

As its initial EV plans faltered, Ford assembled a roughly 350-person California skunkworks team led by Clarke to develop a cheaper and more efficient generation of electric vehicles, called the universal EV platform. The group focused on faster manufacturing, more aerodynamic designs, and dramatically fewer parts.

The camouflaged pickup will be the first test of that strategy. Ford says it can build up to eight different vehicles on the same battery infrastructure.

A tricky EV market with new contenders

Ford's EV comes as it tries to ward off Chinese EV-makers. Other American startups, like the Slate Truck pictured above, are entering the fray as well.  Ben Shimkus/Business Insider Ford's lower-cost EV push is taking shape as a new crop of challengers reaches the US market.

Slate, a Jeff Bezos-backed startup, told Business Insider that the first units of its $24,950 electric pickup will reach customers this year. Fiat has also brought the sub-$15,000 Topolino to the US, although the tiny EV is closer to a golf cart than a daily driver.

And the greatest threat may be overseas.

BYD became the world's largest seller of battery-electric vehicles last year, reaffirming the pressure Chinese automakers are placing on established car companies. Ford CEO Jim Farley has repeatedly praised Chinese EVs for their technology, affordability, and build quality.

When Ford unveiled its Universal EV Platform in 2025, Farley framed the project as a response to competitors attacking the industry from several directions.

"We knew that the Chinese would be the major player for us globally, companies like BYD, new startups from around the world," he said in 2025. "Big technology has their ambition in the auto space. They're all coming for us, legacy automotive companies."

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Ben Shimkus You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.

Ben Shimkus is a reporter for the Business News desk. He writes about cars, transportation, retail, and jobs. Ben's reporting has appeared in Rolling Stone, The Verge, Automotive News, USA Today, AutoBody News, LGBTQ Nation, TopSpeed, and Out Magazine. He's also held staff writing positions at The U.S. Sun and the Daily Mail. He graduated from NYU with a Master's in journalism in 2024. Email Ben at [email protected] or message him privately on Signal at bshimkus.41. 

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Palantir CEO Alex Karp used a July 1 appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box to criticize the closed-model AI economy. He told viewers that when it comes to OpenAI and Anthropic, all is not well inside the AI boom. “I’m not throwing shade at them, but something has gone completely wrong.” Shares of Palantir (NASDAQ:PLTR | PLTR Price Prediction) rose 8% that day as Karp reframed the AI debate around token economics and data ownership.

The Quote That Moved the Stock Karp’s argument was that businesses are exhausted by paying for tokens. As he put it: “The basic view among enterprises in this country is I’m going to chillax and waste my time with tokens.” According to CNBC’s Samantha Subin, Karp took aim at the token model used by OpenAI and Anthropic as AI costs skyrocket. He further argued customers are shifting away from “tokenmaxxing” toward ROI and open-weight models that deliver similar work at a fraction of the cost.

Ahead of the interview, Palantir posted a 9-point “AI sovereignty” manifesto on X. Earlier that week, the company expanded its partnership with Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) to build custom models for U.S. government agencies. Karp’s framing of that alliance was revealing: “What aligns me with Nvidia, and I think is what the technical customers want, which is control over their compute, their models, their data stack and their alpha. They want to know they own the means of production. It’s not being transferred to someone else.”

The Numbers Backing the Swagger Karp speaks from strength. Palantir’s Q1 FY2026 report showed record revenue of $1.63 billion, up 84.7% year over year, the highest growth rate in company history. U.S. commercial revenue jumped 133% to $595 million, and adjusted operating margin expanded to 60% from 44%. Karp put it this way on the call: “Palantir’s Rule of 40 score has soared to 145%. We have shattered the metric, a feat matched only by other fellow AI infrastructure companies: NVIDIA, Micron and SK hynix.” Management raised annual revenue guidance to 71% growth, 10 points ahead of the prior quarter’s forecast. Shares of NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), Karp’s partner in the sovereignty pitch, are up 13.1% year to date.

Token-cost fatigue is showing across businesses: Uber (NYSE:UBER) has reportedly capped employee spending at $1,500 per month for each agentic coding tool, including Claude Code and Cursor, after blowing through its AI budget in four months. For readers tracking the picks-and-shovels layer of this shift, our team’s AI infrastructure research maps the suppliers benefiting most.

The Disconnect and the Bear Case Palantir shares closed at $126.79 on July 10. The stock is down 28.67% year to date, even as operations accelerate. The stock trades at a forward P/E near 91, and Michael Burry’s Scion Asset Management disclosed a new put position tied to 5,000,000 Palantir shares in its Q3 2025 13F filed November 3, 2025, an underlying notional of about $912 million. 13Fs don’t disclose strikes, expirations, or whether the position is still open.

What to watch: whether the “own the means of production” pitch keeps pulling U.S. commercial customers. Palantir’s U.S. commercial remaining deal value (RDV), a measure of contracted business still left to recognize, reached $4.92 billion in the latest quarter, up 112% from a year earlier.

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Palantir didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Is This Pre-IPO AI Robotics Company the Next Big Defense Play?Ondas NASDAQ: ONDS said it has acquired DZYNE Technologies in a transaction valued at approximately $875 million, marking what Chairman and CEO Eric Brock described as a transformational step in building a scaled autonomous defense and security platform.

Speaking on an investor event call, Brock said the deal includes $200 million in cash and approximately $675 million in Ondas equity. He said the acquisition closed concurrently with signing on July 2, allowing integration to begin immediately. DZYNE shareholders, led by majority owner Highlander Partners, will become among Ondas’ largest stockholders, and Highlander has locked up more than half of the shares it received for six months, according to Brock.

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Three Stocks Under $20 With Massive Upside Potential“This is not a financial acquisition,” Brock said. “It is a strategic combination designed to create a larger, stronger, and more competitive autonomous defense company.”

DZYNE Adds Autonomous Defense Platforms Brock said DZYNE brings operational products, a U.S.-based manufacturing base, customer relationships across defense agencies and allied militaries, and nearly 120 engineers. He said the acquisition expands Ondas’ position in persistent intelligence, aerial security, counter-drone systems, autonomous effects and AI-enabled mission intelligence.

Ondas Inc. Flywheel Gains Momentum, Vertical Liftoff ImminentDZYNE’s portfolio spans three core franchises, according to the company presentation:

Long-endurance ISR: Ultra and LEAP, autonomous aircraft designed for persistent intelligence missions. Aerial security and counter-UAS: IonStrike, Dronebuster and Sawtooth systems. Autonomous effects: Blitz and Grasshopper, aimed at affordable mass and launched effects missions. Matt McCue, founder and CEO of DZYNE and incoming chief technology officer of Ondas Sentinel, said Ultra provides more than three days of endurance at more than 25,000 feet, while LEAP provides more than a day of endurance at 17,000 feet. He said both platforms are in operational use with U.S. and allied partners.

McCue said IonStrike was developed from concept to demonstrated capability in six months to address threats such as the Shahed-136 drone. He also highlighted Dronebuster and Sawtooth as soft-kill counter-UAS systems, and said DZYNE is working on a long-range electronic attack solution and lidar detection capability.

Ondas Creates Sentinel Operating Platform Ryan Hartman, CEO of Ondas Sentinel, said DZYNE fills a gap between Ondas’ lower-altitude unmanned systems and stratospheric assets, adding Group 4 and Group 5 long-endurance UAS capabilities. Ondas Sentinel will combine DZYNE and World View under one operating platform.

Hartman said the combined Ondas Sentinel organization includes eight U.S. facilities, more than 330,000 square feet of manufacturing capacity, 500 employees and more than 140 engineers. Brock said DZYNE contributes about 145,000 square feet of U.S.-based production capacity.

Ondas executives emphasized the role of SkyWeaver, the company’s mission autonomy layer being developed with Palantir. Hartman said SkyWeaver is intended to connect platforms across Ondas’ portfolio and enable tasking, collection and mission autonomy. In response to a question from Sydney Freedberg of Breaking Defense, Hartman said the company does not intend SkyWeaver to be a closed proprietary system, but rather a platform able to ingest data from and task third-party systems.

Hartman said SkyWeaver is a joint development program between Ondas and Palantir, with Ondas funding the development. He said Palantir is supporting go-to-market activities and helping ensure Ondas platforms can connect with systems such as Maven.

Financial Targets Raised Brock said DZYNE is expected to generate approximately $190 million to $191 million of revenue in 2026 and more than $300 million in 2027. He also said the business is expected to deliver more than 80% compounded annual revenue growth from 2025 through 2028.

Ondas raised its 2026 revenue target to more than $525 million, up from the $390 million target it announced in May. Brock said the revised target includes contributions from DZYNE and Omnisys, whose acquisition closed in May.

DZYNE has $111 million in backlog and a customer pipeline of more than $1.5 billion, according to Brock. He said Ondas entered the second quarter with approximately $457 million in pro forma backlog and announced more than $150 million of additional orders during the quarter. He also said Ondas expects backlog to expand by $95 million upon closing the Cyberhawk acquisition, which the company expects in the third quarter.

In response to a question from Max Michaelis of Lake Street, Brock said the company is seeing gross margins of 40% to 50% for the DZYNE-related profile, while noting Ondas would provide more financial detail on its second-quarter call in August.

Management Says Acquisition Pace Will Moderate During the call, Brock said Ondas has been executing a strategy to build a multi-domain autonomous systems company through acquisitions, partnerships and operating scale. Hartman cited recent activity including BIRD Aerosystems, Rotron Aerospace, a Palantir partnership, Mistral, World View and Omnisys.

Asked whether the acquisition spree is winding down, Brock said Ondas remains in the early stages of a major adoption cycle for unmanned and autonomous systems, but said the company expects to “moderate the acquisition pace” in the second half and focus on growth, integration and operating leverage.

Brock said Ondas’ priorities are to integrate DZYNE, support customers, scale manufacturing, expand recurring revenue and continue investing in technologies that strengthen its competitive position.

About Ondas NASDAQ: ONDSOndas Holdings, Inc NASDAQ: ONDS develops secure private wireless networking solutions and unmanned aircraft systems tailored to mission-critical industrial applications. Its Ondas Networks division offers the proprietary FullMAX platform, a long-range, high-bandwidth broadband network designed to support real-time data transmission, remote monitoring and IoT deployments across rail, maritime and infrastructure environments. The broadband platform integrates edge-to-cloud architecture to ensure operational resilience and regulatory compliance for transportation and utility operators.

The company's Ondas Autonomous Systems segment builds heavy-lift cargo drones and uncrewed aircraft platforms for logistics, pipeline and infrastructure inspection, emergency response and other government and commercial use cases.

This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected].

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Ford (F +2.87%) is the top-ranked mainstream brand in J.D. Power's 2026 U.S. Initial Quality Study -- the first time the automaker has led the mass-market rankings since 2010. The study, released in late June, measures the problems owners report in their first 90 days with a new vehicle.

Ford posted 152 problems per 100 vehicles, better than every mass-market rival and all but two brands in the industry. For a company that ranked No. 15 among mainstream brands as recently as 2023, that is a remarkable climb.

Does a quality award actually matter for the stock? I think this one does. Here's why.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

A 16-year drought ends Ford's win was not narrow. The F-150, Mustang, and Super Duty each ranked highest in their segments, and seven of the 10 Ford models tested placed in the top three of their segments. The brand also improved by 41 problems per 100 vehicles compared with last year's study, the largest improvement among mainstream brands.

The industry got better, too, with the average improving to 175 problems per 100 vehicles from 192, and Ford beat that average by a wide margin.

The reason all of this matters to investors comes down to warranty costs. When vehicles leave the factory with defects, the automaker pays for it later in warranty claims and recalls. And Ford has spent years working to bring those costs down.

CEO Jim Farley himself has linked quality to profits, citing in the company's fourth-quarter earnings release "lowering material and warranty costs and making real progress on quality" as part of the company's improvement plan. Even more, in its first-quarter update in late April, Ford said it is on track for $1 billion in material and warranty cost reductions this year.

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The financial rebuild behind the trophy This quality push comes at a time when investors are looking for more good news from Ford in order to combat the bad news. Ford's adjusted earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) fell from $10.2 billion in 2024 to $6.8 billion in 2025, and the company reported a full-year net loss of $8.2 billion on special charges that included impairments tied to canceled electric vehicle programs. And costs tied to a disruption at aluminum supplier Novelis and to tariffs weighed on the year, too (though management says it is on track to recover the Novelis-related profits in the second half of 2026).

The first quarter, however, pointed in the other direction. Revenue rose 6% year over year to $43.3 billion, and adjusted EBIT climbed to $3.5 billion from $1.0 billion in the year-ago quarter, expanding the company's adjusted EBIT margin to 8.1% from 2.5%. A one-time $1.3 billion tariff refund helped, but even excluding it, adjusted EBIT more than doubled. And management raised its full-year adjusted EBIT guidance to a range of $8.5 billion to $10.5 billion, up from a prior range of $8.0 billion to $10.0 billion.

But even the high end of that guidance only gets Ford back near its 2024 earnings power. In other words, the rebuild still has a ways to go before investors can view Ford as a healthy, growing business.

And this one award doesn't necessarily solidify Ford's value proposition in terms of quality. The company has also continued to issue recalls at a high rate this year. And, of course, investors should remember that this is still a cyclical and capital-hungry business. This makes earning a good return on invested capital difficult.

With that said, the stock isn't asking for much. At about $14 as of this writing, shares trade at about 8 times forward earnings. And Ford's regular dividend of $0.60 per share annually gives the stock a yield of more than 4% at the current price. A valuation like that already prices in plenty of skepticism.

So, what does the quality crown mean for the stock? It won't move earnings on its own. But it may be the most credible evidence yet that the costs that have dogged Ford for years could keep coming down -- and cheaper warranty claims flow straight to the bottom line. I think shares look attractive here. Still, this is an auto stock, and demand can swing hard with the economy. I'd keep any position modest and watch whether the cost savings continue to materialize.

In the latest trading session, T. Rowe Price (TROW - Free Report) closed at $118.55, marking a +1.28% move from the previous day. This move outpaced the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.42%. On the other hand, the Dow registered a gain of 0.29%, and the technology-centric Nasdaq increased by 0.29%.

Coming into today, shares of the financial services firm had gained 8.11% in the past month. In that same time, the Finance sector gained 4.33%, while the S&P 500 gained 2.2%.

Market participants will be closely following the financial results of T. Rowe Price in its upcoming release. The company plans to announce its earnings on July 31, 2026. In that report, analysts expect T. Rowe Price to post earnings of $2.37 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 5.8%. Meanwhile, the latest consensus estimate predicts the revenue to be $1.88 billion, indicating a 8.85% increase compared to the same quarter of the previous year.

For the full year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $9.76 per share and revenue of $7.59 billion, which would represent changes of +0.41% and +3.73%, respectively, from the prior year.

Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for T Rowe Price. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of near-term business trends. Consequently, upward revisions in estimates express analysts' positivity towards the business operations and its ability to generate profits.

Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. We developed the Zacks Rank to capitalize on this phenomenon. Our system takes these estimate changes into account and delivers a clear, actionable rating model.

The Zacks Rank system, running from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), holds an admirable track record of superior performance, independently audited, with #1 stocks contributing an average annual return of +25% since 1988. The Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 1.4% higher within the past month. T. Rowe Price is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

In the context of valuation, T. Rowe Price is at present trading with a Forward P/E ratio of 11.99. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 11.67, which means T. Rowe Price is trading at a premium to the group.

It is also worth noting that TROW currently has a PEG ratio of 5.91. The PEG ratio is akin to the commonly utilized P/E ratio, but this measure also incorporates the company's anticipated earnings growth rate. As the market closed yesterday, the Financial - Investment Management industry was having an average PEG ratio of 1.04.

The Financial - Investment Management industry is part of the Finance sector. Currently, this industry holds a Zacks Industry Rank of 181, positioning it in the bottom 27% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank assesses the strength of our separate industry groups by calculating the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks contained within the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

Don't forget to use Zacks.com to keep track of all these stock-moving metrics, and others, in the upcoming trading sessions.

Lululemon (LULU - Free Report) closed at $119.26 in the latest trading session, marking a +2.36% move from the prior day. This change outpaced the S&P 500's 0.42% gain on the day. Elsewhere, the Dow saw an upswing of 0.29%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq appreciated by 0.29%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the athletic apparel maker had lost 4.37% lagged the Consumer Discretionary sector's gain of 0.02% and the S&P 500's gain of 2.2%.

Investors will be eagerly watching for the performance of Lululemon in its upcoming earnings disclosure. It is anticipated that the company will report an EPS of $1.79, marking a 42.26% fall compared to the same quarter of the previous year. At the same time, our most recent consensus estimate is projecting a revenue of $2.47 billion, reflecting a 2.26% fall from the equivalent quarter last year.

For the annual period, the Zacks Consensus Estimates anticipate earnings of $11.08 per share and a revenue of $11.08 billion, signifying shifts of -16.44% and -0.22%, respectively, from the last year.

Any recent changes to analyst estimates for Lululemon should also be noted by investors. Such recent modifications usually signify the changing landscape of near-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the business outlook.

Our research shows that these estimate changes are directly correlated with near-term stock prices. We developed the Zacks Rank to capitalize on this phenomenon. Our system takes these estimate changes into account and delivers a clear, actionable rating model.

The Zacks Rank system ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell). It has a remarkable, outside-audited track record of success, with #1 stocks delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection has moved 1.51% lower. Currently, Lululemon is carrying a Zacks Rank of #5 (Strong Sell).

From a valuation perspective, Lululemon is currently exchanging hands at a Forward P/E ratio of 10.52. This expresses a discount compared to the average Forward P/E of 15.73 of its industry.

Also, we should mention that LULU has a PEG ratio of 3.77. This metric is used similarly to the famous P/E ratio, but the PEG ratio also takes into account the stock's expected earnings growth rate. The average PEG ratio for the Textile - Apparel industry stood at 2.14 at the close of the market yesterday.

The Textile - Apparel industry is part of the Consumer Discretionary sector. At present, this industry carries a Zacks Industry Rank of 191, placing it within the bottom 23% of over 250 industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank assesses the vigor of our specific industry groups by computing the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks incorporated in the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

Keep in mind to rely on Zacks.com to watch all these stock-impacting metrics, and more, in the succeeding trading sessions.

Tenet Healthcare (THC - Free Report) closed the most recent trading day at $204.25, moving -1.22% from the previous trading session. This change lagged the S&P 500's 0.42% gain on the day. Meanwhile, the Dow experienced a rise of 0.29%, and the technology-dominated Nasdaq saw an increase of 0.29%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the hospital operator had gained 19.4% outpaced the Medical sector's gain of 5.6% and the S&P 500's gain of 2.2%.

Investors will be eagerly watching for the performance of Tenet Healthcare in its upcoming earnings disclosure. The company's earnings report is set to be unveiled on July 24, 2026. The company's upcoming EPS is projected at $4.08, signifying a 1.49% increase compared to the same quarter of the previous year. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $5.39 billion, up 2.27% from the year-ago period.

In terms of the entire fiscal year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates predict earnings of $17.61 per share and a revenue of $22.02 billion, indicating changes of +4.95% and +3.32%, respectively, from the former year.

Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for Tenet Healthcare. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of near-term business trends. As such, positive estimate revisions reflect analyst optimism about the business and profitability.

Our research suggests that these changes in estimates have a direct relationship with upcoming stock price performance. To exploit this, we've formed the Zacks Rank, a quantitative model that includes these estimate changes and presents a viable rating system.

Ranging from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), the Zacks Rank system has a proven, outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks returning an average of +25% annually since 1988. Over the past month, there's been no change in the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate. Tenet Healthcare is holding a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy) right now.

With respect to valuation, Tenet Healthcare is currently being traded at a Forward P/E ratio of 11.74. This expresses no noticeable deviation compared to the average Forward P/E of 11.74 of its industry.

It is also worth noting that THC currently has a PEG ratio of 1.7. Comparable to the widely accepted P/E ratio, the PEG ratio also accounts for the company's projected earnings growth. The Medical - Hospital industry had an average PEG ratio of 1.7 as trading concluded yesterday.

The Medical - Hospital industry is part of the Medical sector. With its current Zacks Industry Rank of 60, this industry ranks in the top 25% of all industries, numbering over 250.

The strength of our individual industry groups is measured by the Zacks Industry Rank, which is calculated based on the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within these groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

Remember to apply Zacks.com to follow these and more stock-moving metrics during the upcoming trading sessions.