Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Publication marks a significant milestone in establishing the environmental certification framework for eVTOLs.

, /PRNewswire/ -- Eve Air Mobility ("Eve" or "the Company") (NYSE: EVEX, EVEXW; B3: EVEB31) welcomes the publication by Brazil's National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC) of the Proposed Noise Certification Criteria for Eve 100, the Company's electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. The proposal is open for consultation until August 08 and represents a major step toward establishing the environmental certification framework for eVTOLs. The publication is a key milestone in the Eve 100 certification process and demonstrates continued progress toward type certification.

"ANAC's publication of the proposed noise certification criteria is an important milestone in the development and certification of Eve 100," said Johann Bordais, CEO at Eve. "We appreciate ANAC's leadership and collaborative approach in developing a framework tailored to this emerging technology aircraft. This initiative supports the safe and responsible introduction of eVTOL operations for urban mobility while promoting international regulatory alignment."

As the aviation industry introduces innovative technologies that differ from conventional aircraft, dedicated certification criteria are necessary to address the unique operational and acoustic characteristics of these vehicles. The proposed criteria are the result of extensive engagement between Eve and ANAC and draw on existing aviation noise regulations, adapting them to the specific characteristics of Eve 100 and its future operations.

The consultation also reflects broader international efforts led by aviation authorities and industry stakeholders to develop harmonized approaches to emerging technologies. Eve continues to actively participate in global regulatory discussions, helping support the development of future noise standards for advanced air mobility.

"Aircraft noise is a critical component of aviation environmental certification and an important factor in public acceptance of urban air mobility," said Isabel Lima, Head of Noise and Vibration at Eve. "Noise certification establishes measurement methodologies and compliance criteria, ensuring that new aircraft are introduced with appropriate environmental protection and consideration for surrounding communities."

As part of the certification process, the proposed criteria are intended to evaluate the acoustic characteristics of Eve 100 throughout phases of flight, supporting a comprehensive understanding of the aircraft's environmental footprint before commercial operations begin.

Noise reduction has been a key consideration throughout the development of Eve's eVTOL. Drawing on a lift-plus-cruise architecture, the aircraft has been designed to deliver a quieter experience than conventional helicopters. Eve's approach to community acceptance is also supported by insights from its Visual & Sound Perception Study, conducted in collaboration with the Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR). Using virtual reality and sound simulations, the study engaged more than 100 participants across New York, Orlando and San Francisco to better understand how communities perceive the sights and sounds of eVTOL operations in different urban and suburban settings. Alongside acoustic modeling assessments, engineering prototype flight testing continues to support Eve's efforts to better understand and optimize Eve 100's noise characteristics as the program advances.

Following completion of the consultation period, ANAC will review stakeholder contributions and continue work toward finalizing the applicable certification requirements. Eve continues to work closely with ANAC as the primary certification authority, while pursuing international validation activities that support the future global deployment of Eve 100.

Images: https://eve.imagerelay.com/fl/545b460810be4c698559bb0e836f6d6d 

About Eve Air Mobility

Eve Air Mobility is dedicated to accelerating the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) ecosystem. Benefitting from a start-up mindset, backed by Embraer's 56-year history of aerospace expertise, and with a singular focus, Eve is taking a holistic approach to advancing the UAM ecosystem, with an advanced eVTOL project, a comprehensive global services and support network, and a unique air traffic management solution. Eve is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (EVEX; EVEXW) and the São Paulo Stock Exchange (EVEB31), where its shares of common stock, public warrants and Brazilian Depository Receipts are traded. For more information, please visit www.eveairmobility.com.

Forward-Looking Statement Disclosure 

Certain statements contained in this release are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements may be identified by words such as "may," "will," "expect," "intend," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "plan," "project," "could," "should," "would," "continue," "seek," "target," "guidance," "outlook," "if current trends continue," "optimistic," "forecast" and other similar words or expressions. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, are forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements about the company's plans, objectives, expectations, outlooks, projections, intentions, estimates, and other statements of future events or conditions, including with respect to all companies or entities named within. These forward-looking statements are based on the company's current objectives, beliefs and expectations, and they are subject to significant risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results and financial position and timing of certain events to differ materially from the information in the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those set forth herein as well as in Part I, Item 1A. Risk Factors and Part II, Item 7. Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations of the company's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, Part I, Item 2. Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations and Part II, Item 1A. Risk Factors of the company's most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, and other risks and uncertainties listed from time to time in the company's other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Additionally, there may be other factors of which the company is not currently aware that may affect matters discussed in the forward-looking statements and may also cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed. The company does not assume any obligation to publicly update or supplement any forward-looking statement to reflect actual results, changes in assumptions or changes in other factors affecting these forward-looking statements other than as required by law. Any forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof or as of the dates indicated in the statement.

SOURCE Eve Air Mobility

Nvidia (NVDA 1.97%) stock hasn't been an incredible performer this year, but it is slightly edging out the S&P 500 (^GSPC 1.01%), with both up around 11% year to date.

It's still the most valuable company in the world with a $5 trillion valuation, so reaching $10 trillion by 2030 would imply doubling. It looks like a distinct possibility. Here's why.

Image source: Nvidia.

Nvidia isn't slowing down Sales growth has been accelerating. Revenue increased 85% year over year in the 2027 fiscal first quarter (ended April 26), and Wall Street is looking for even higher growth in the second quarter: a whopping 96%, with a forecast of 82% for the full year. That's quite a feat for a company as big as Nvidia.

The positive signs abound. On Tuesday, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said he thinks artificial intelligence (AI) spending will reach $1 trillion in 2027, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, which makes Nvidia's chips, is investing $100 billion in its new Arizona facility.

The chip market is heating up The AI chip races are only getting faster. Nvidia accounts for 80% to 90% of the market, according to Silicon Analysts, a level of absolute dominance. That lead is projected to decline to 75% as competitors like Advanced Micro Devices gain traction and many top AI players compete with other chip types, such as Broadcom's Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) and Alphabet's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). However, even a 75% lead is fortress-level.

Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang doesn't seem fussed by the competition; he sees more AI development as a good thing for the company, which underpins much of the AI infrastructure. Whether or not the competition advances, Nvidia should keep growing and remain the leader.

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More concerning, from an investing standpoint, might be whether Nvidia can continue to demonstrate accelerating growth or even maintain current growth rates. As the base gets bigger, that isn't likely to last much longer. For example, if it were to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 80% over the next four years, it would have $2.7 trillion in sales, easily becoming the largest company in the world.

It's more likely that growth will slow over the next four years, and as it does, the stock will reflect that. It trades at a premium price-to-sales ratio of 20 right now, but that would likely decline as growth decelerates.

To see how it could play out, a CAGR of 40% to 50% would result in somewhere around $1 trillion in sales in 2030, or about four times today's trailing-12-month revenue. At the current price-to-sales ratio, the stock would quadruple. But at half the ratio, or 10 times trailing-12-month sales, the stock would double and reach $10 trillion.

That's just one possibility, but it's rooted in reality and is a potential scenario for where Nvidia stock could be by 2030.

JPMorgan Chase is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Jennifer Saibil has positions in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Broadcom, JPMorgan Chase, Nvidia, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

HomeEarnings AnalysisConsumer 

SummaryYum China is rated Hold, with valuation upside limited to ~5% and a fair 13–15x forward earnings multiple.The PHC (Pizza Hut China) acquisition is strategically positive, enabling menu localization, cost synergies, and improved margins by eliminating royalty fees.Macro headwinds in China—weak consumption, layoffs, and cautious consumer sentiment—may constrain SSS growth and pricing power for KFC and PHC brands.YUMC’s valuation premium to domestic peers appears justified, but further upside is capped without new catalysts amid ongoing macro uncertainty. Wirestock/iStock Editorial via Getty Images

We are previewing YUM China’s (YUMC) upcoming Q2 results, which are scheduled for July 30th. Heading into the print, the consensus is largely bullish with a BUY rating and average target price of $61/share.

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Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha's Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

The AI chip trade has cracked this month. Micron Technology has dropped about 32% in three weeks. Broadcom sits roughly 24% below its 52-week high. Even Nvidia (NVDA 1.97%), which has held up better than most, is down about 12% from its high as of this writing.

The fear isn't weak demand so much as who captures it. Chinese AI lab DeepSeek is reportedly developing its own AI chip to reduce its reliance on Nvidia, according to a July 7 Reuters report. OpenAI recently unveiled a custom inference chip of its own, designed with Broadcom. And the big cloud companies keep scaling their in-house silicon programs.

Investors are suddenly asking which chip designer keeps its pricing power in a world where every major AI player wants alternatives.

I'd rather skip that argument entirely. The AI chip stock I'd buy hand over fist in this sell-off is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM 2.96%), the company that manufactures leading-edge chips for nearly every side of the fight.

Image source: TSMC.

A record quarter the market shrugged at Taiwan Semi reported second-quarter results on Thursday, and they were exceptional. Revenue rose 33.7% year over year to $40.2 billion. Net income jumped 77.4% year over year, reaching a fresh record. Gross margin came in at 67.7%, its fourth straight quarter of expansion, up from 59.5% in the third quarter of 2025.

The trajectory matters as much as the levels. TSMC's year-over-year net income growth has accelerated from 35% in the fourth quarter of 2025 to 58.3% in the first quarter of 2026 and now 77.4%. Management expects the momentum to continue, too, guiding for third-quarter revenue of $44.6 billion to $45.8 billion, or roughly 37% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. On the earnings call, management also raised its full-year 2026 revenue growth outlook to slightly more than 40%, up from its earlier call for growth of more than 30%.

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Driving all of this is the company's grip on leading-edge manufacturing. Chips built on 7-nanometer processes and smaller accounted for 77% of wafer revenue in the quarter. And the next wave is just beginning.

"Moving into third quarter 2026, we expect our business to be supported by continued strong demand for our leading-edge process technologies, including the steep ramp-up of our 2-nanometer technology," said chief financial officer Wendell Huang in the company's second-quarter earnings release.

Why not Nvidia? To be clear, I like Nvidia's business. But this particular sell-off is aimed at the exact thing that makes Nvidia's stock work: its pricing power. If DeepSeek, OpenAI, and the cloud giants succeed in designing around Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs), Nvidia's growth could slow.

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Taiwan Semi doesn't have that problem. After all, those custom chips still have to be manufactured somewhere, and the leading-edge capacity to build them is overwhelmingly TSMC's.

The company manufactured 12,682 products for 534 customers in 2025. Owning the stock is a bet on AI computing demand itself, not on any one design winning.

What about the cheaper, harder-hit names? Micron trades at about 6 times forward earnings after its plunge. But memory is a deeply cyclical business, and buying it here is a bet that today's unusually strong memory pricing holds.

Broadcom, a genuine winner in custom AI chips, is arguably the closer call. But even down 24%, it trades at about 21 times forward earnings, with its custom-chip momentum already priced in.

Taiwan Semi, meanwhile, trades at about 30 times trailing earnings at its price of around $410 as of this writing -- roughly in line with Nvidia, for a business whose profit growth is accelerating and whose margins keep expanding.

Of course, there are reasons the market hesitated on Thursday. Alongside the record results, management raised its 2026 capital spending plan to $60 billion to $64 billion, at least $4 billion above its prior forecast, and pledged an additional $100 billion investment in Arizona. Spending at that scale could pressure margins over time.

The bigger risks are older ones. Most of the company's production still sits in Taiwan, with all the geopolitical uncertainty that entails. And the semiconductor industry has never stopped being cyclical.

But at this valuation, I think investors are getting the company that manufactures nearly every leading-edge AI chip, at close to Nvidia's multiple, without having to guess which designs win.

With that said, I'd size the position with the geopolitical risk in mind.

The human appetite has more than one off switch, and drugmakers like Eli Lilly (LLY +0.76%) and Novo Nordisk (NVO 2.25%) are doing their darndest to identify and develop a medicine to target every single one.

On June 24, Viking Therapeutics (VKTX +1.95%) announced a phase 1 trial for one of its candidates that's attempting to flip one of those as-yet unmedicated appetite switches. That marks its first obesity candidate working outside the incretin pathway that includes GLP-1, or glucagon-like peptide-1, the hormone behind Ozempic and Wegovy and one of two hormones behind Zepbound and Mounjaro.

Let's take a look at this program and determine whether it's really going to be a threat to Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly.

Image source: Getty Images.

This hormone is already a hot target Amylin is a hormone produced in the pancreas that is released with insulin after a meal, activating receptors in the brain stem that promote the feeling of fullness, and also slowing stomach emptying. That pathway is adjacent to the one that the GLP-1 medicines use, so it could technically be targeted by a combination therapy affecting both.

VK3019, Viking's new candidate, is a dual amylin and calcitonin receptor agonist. Additionally targeting calcitonin activation is meant to yield metabolic effects amylin alone does not; preclinical animal model data showed that the combination led to up to 8% weight reduction against controls.

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The new phase 1 trial, announced on June 24, is being conducted in adults with a body mass index of 30 or above, and the candidate is formulated as an injection. If Viking's dual targets work as desired, the company could be on the way to producing a leading next-generation weight loss candidate -- but its bigger competitors are way ahead of it.

Eli Lilly reported phase 2 results for eloralintide, an amylin receptor agonist, in November 2025; across dosing arms, patients experienced mean weight reductions of 9.5% to 20.1% after 48 weeks, against a loss of 0.4% with placebo. Phase 3 is already in progress.

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Novo Nordisk has gone even further. Its candidate cagrilintide produced 11.8% weight loss against 2.3% for placebo over a 68-week period; its phase 3 program began in late 2025. A combination drug program called CagriSema, which contains cagrilintide plus semaglutide (the active ingredient of Ozempic and Wegovy), was submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in December, with review expected this year.

The combination approach is popular, too So Viking Therapeutics won't be the first to market with its amylin program, even if its clinical trials go swimmingly.

But Viking already owns VK2735, a dual agonist of the GLP-1 and glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) receptors that's in phase 3 trials. Pairing it with an amylin candidate like VK3019 could deliver the results that would keep the company relevant in the next round of the competition in weight loss drugs. And, as a pre-revenue biotech, it wouldn't even need to win that much of the market for its shares to see meaningful gains.

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The catch is that Lilly is already running that exact play. A phase 1 study of eloralintide administered with tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Zepbound) has completed, and a phase 3 trial adding eloralintide to a weekly incretin is enrolling now. Viking is thus trying to assemble what both incumbents built years ago.

That means VK3019 is going to need to be substantially more effective or more pleasant to take if the biotech is going to secure a large share of the market. It's certainly possible -- but it's very risky to bet on it.

CES, held annually in January, is one of the most important trade shows where tech companies go to unveil innovations and showcase bold ideas for the future.

At the 2026 event, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang offered something that has been just as impactful: his insights about the growing memory needs of artificial intelligence (AI). And based on where the stock prices of Micron Technology (MU +0.04%) and Sandisk (SNDK 3.99%) have gone since then, his understand of the situation was right on the money.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Image source: Nvidia.

The AI memory crunch Large language models are being asked to deliver on requests promptly, but there's also a growing expectation that these tools will preserve users' older requests and conversations as time savers to provide context for the new ones. That requires increasingly higher memory capacity in the data centers that power those AIs, which Huang alluded to in his January CES speech:

We would like this AI to stay with us our entire lives and remember every single conversation we've ever had with it, right? Every single lick of research that I've asked for. Of course, the number of people sharing the supercomputer will continue to grow. And so, this context memory, which started out fitting inside an HBM, is no longer large enough.

Over the last year, as Micron and Sandisk have kept reporting surging revenue figures in their respective quarterly reports, Huang's insight on the expanding demand for memory and storage for AI has proven true.

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AI boosts revenue In Micron's fiscal 2026 third quarter, it reported total revenue of $41.4 billion, which was a significant increase for the company; its full-year revenue in 2025 was just $37.3 billion. That rapid revenue growth is thanks to its cloud and data center divisions.

Quarter

Cloud Memory Revenue

Core Data Center Revenue

Q3 2025

$3.3 billion

$1.5 billion

Q3 2026

$13.7 billion

$11.5 billion

Data source: Micron.

Sandisk's top line is smaller than Micron's, but it's still growing significantly. Its total revenue in its fiscal 2026 third quarter was $5.9 billion, up 251%. Its data center and edge divisions (providing memory storage for things like drones and car sensors) have been key revenue drivers.

Quarter

Data Center Revenue

Edge Revenue

Q3 2025

$197 million

$927 million

Q3 2026

$1.4 billion

$3.6 billion

Data source: Sandisk.

Why sales can keep growing The AI infrastructure build-out isn't expected to slow down anytime soon, and as long as it continues, demand for memory and storage chips will remain robust. But each of these companies is signing longer-term deals with customers that lock in prices and supply agreements for multiple years. This should eventually help them offset some of the cyclicity that the memory and data storage industry is known for.

Micron signed 16 strategic customer agreements in its fiscal third quarter, with cash deposits and financial commitments totaling $22 billion to date. Meanwhile, in its third quarter, Sandisk signed three contracts with total contractual revenue of at least $42 billion.

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The stock prices for both have pulled back over the past few days, but those retrenchments came on the back of strong runs upward. Thus far in 2026, while Nvidia shares have climbed by 11%, shares of Micron have performed much better; Micron's stock price is up nearly 200%, while shares of Sandisk have skyrocketed by almost 500%.

The short term looks a little uncertain amid an AI sector sell-off. Still, as there appears to be no end in sight to the deep mismatch between memory and storage supply and demand, both stocks could keep rewarding investors over the next several years.

Led by CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang, Nvidia (NVDA 1.97%) has established itself as the top chipmaker in AI, and it does not plan on giving up its throne anytime soon. Much of the company's success can be directly tied to Huang's instinctive talent for predicting where the tech world is headed well in advance. That's why the stock is a buy.

Nvidia was founded in 1993, and its invention of the graphics processing unit (GPU) in 1999 helped fuel the video game market by speeding up graphics rendering and allowing for major leaps forward in computer graphics. The video game market was big at the time, but Huang's more important strategic move was to have Nvidia create its CUDA software platform, which makes its chips programmable for other tasks.

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A history of forward-looking moves While the full value of that strategy took many years to manifest, Nvidia wisely seeded CUDA into universities and research labs that were doing early work on AI. The result was that most foundational AI code was written on CUDA for Nvidia's GPUs, which is why the company enjoys a wide moat in AI model training today.

Huang did not stop there, though. In 2020, Nvidia acquired networking company Mellanox. It was a company with technology ahead of its time, but Huang again saw where the market was heading. Today, Nvidia's networking portfolio is the fastest-growing part of its business and a key part of its transformation from a GPU specialist into a complete AI infrastructure player.

Huang also anticipated the shift toward inference and agentic AI, and took steps to ensure Nvidia would be a big player in these markets. The company has developed its own ARM-based central processing units (CPUs), as CPUs will play an important role in managing AI agents. The GPU-to-CPU ratio in AI data centers built when workloads were primarily driven by training was 8 to 1. As cloud companies build out infrastructure for agentic AI, the prediction is that the ratio could shift to 1 to 1. With that in mind, Nvidia has projected that the data center CPU market could reach a value of $200 billion in the next few years.

Image source: Nvidia.

Nvidia also acquired the assets and key personnel of Groq, including its language processing units (LPUs), which it has since incorporated into the CUDA ecosystem. These chips will help with servers designed specifically for inference, a market that's eventually expected to grow to a much larger size than AI model training.

The company's unique server offering will use both GPUs and LPUs, with GPUs handling the prefill phase of understanding users' prompts and LPUs dealing with the decode phase of giving quicker responses. This could be the next big growth driver for the company.

Overall, Nvidia is an attractively priced stock. It's trading at just 16 times analysts' earnings estimates for its fiscal 2028 (which ends in January 2028), and its top and bottom lines are growing rapidly. However, the biggest reason to own this AI stock for the long term is that Huang has proven to be a visionary who can position Nvidia for what's next.

CoreWeave (CRWV +0.60%) closed Thursday at $72.91, down 52% from its 52-week high of $153.20. The main reason the stock keeps falling is the cost of its growth: The artificial intelligence (AI) cloud provider borrows heavily to build data centers, and the bill for that debt is growing about as fast as the business itself.

The first quarter showed both sides. Revenue rose 112% year over year to $2.1 billion. But interest expense more than doubled to $536 million, up from $264 million in the year-ago quarter, and the company's net loss widened to $740 million from $315 million. When CoreWeave reported those results in May, the stock sank about 10% as its revenue forecast disappointed investors and its spending forecast grew again.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

This week brought fresh pressure, with shares falling 3.5% on Wednesday and dropping again Thursday as AI infrastructure stocks sold off broadly.

Insiders haven't helped the mood. CEO Michael Intrator sold about 369,000 shares for roughly $31 million in early July, then about 308,000 more for roughly $25 million on July 14, though the sales came under a prearranged trading plan adopted last year.

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And then there's Meta Platforms. Bloomberg reported on July 1 that the social media giant is planning a cloud business, known internally as Meta Compute, that would sell surplus AI computing capacity to enterprise customers. Renting out AI computing capacity is exactly CoreWeave's business. Making matters more complicated, Meta is also one of CoreWeave's largest customers. The two expanded their relationship in April with an agreement worth about $21 billion through 2032.

Demand, notably, is not the problem. CoreWeave's revenue backlog reached $99.4 billion as of March 31, in what management called the strongest bookings quarter in the company's history. Active power topped 1 gigawatt in the first quarter, and management believes the company is on its way to more than 8 gigawatts by 2030.

What would it take to stop the slide? Most likely, interest costs would need to grow far more slowly than they have been, showing the debt-heavy model can scale toward profitability. And investors would need evidence that the nearly $100 billion backlog can convert into revenue at healthy margins, even with a major customer like Meta potentially competing for the same business.

Until then, the pattern of the past month could persist: strong demand headlines, followed by reminders of what that demand costs to serve. The business keeps growing quickly. The stock's problem is the price of funding that growth -- and, for now, the market keeps marking that price down.

ExxonMobil (XOM +0.97%) provided additional information about its second-quarter operations to help Wall Street prepare for its actual earnings release. That isn't a normal event, but then these aren't normal times in the energy sector. Here's what investors need to know.

Oil: Big changes in a short period of time The geopolitical conflict in the Middle East broke out late in the first quarter. The price of oil rocketed higher, but the financial benefit was minimal in the first quarter. The second quarter will see most of the impact from the energy price spike caused by the conflict. Exxon's pre-earnings update is meant to clarify the potential impact, with some estimates suggesting it could add as much as $5 billion to the company's bottom line.

Image source: Getty Images.

That said, investors need to take the update with a grain of salt. Oil prices have already fallen materially from their peak levels. So the second-quarter benefit could be huge, but at this point it is hard to get a read on what that might mean for the third quarter. This speaks to the real issue investors need to keep in mind when they buy an energy stock like ExxonMobil.

Energy prices are volatile, hard stop The current geopolitical conflict is headline-grabbing, so investors are closely watching its impact on oil and natural gas prices. However, the energy sector has a long history of volatility. The current price swing isn't an outlier; it is the norm. That means that Exxon's earnings swing isn't abnormal, either. It is just par for the course.

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Exxon is one of the world's largest energy companies. And it has long handled the industry's ups and downs in relative stride, highlighted by decades' worth of annual dividend increases. It also has a peer-leading debt-to-equity ratio of roughly 0.2x, so it is financially prepared to deal with falling energy prices. It is a through-the-cycle energy stock for those who want to buy and hold. One quarter of good earnings shouldn't be the driver of your investment decision.

Buy Exxon with your eyes wide open That said, Exxon has been very clear about the current energy market. Despite the pullback in energy prices from their early conflict peak, Exxon doesn't believe oil prices fully reflect the fundamentals of the energy market right now. That hints that oil prices could rise again, even if the conflict comes to a close, which doesn't seem like it is in the cards right now. However, the really important takeaway from all of this is that oil prices are volatile, which means Exxon's earnings will be volatile, too.

Earlier this month, Plug Power (PLUG +0.93%) investors received some great news: The company's 50-megawatt (MW) hydrogen electrolyzer project in Australia is expected to move into the execution phase. This essentially clears the way for Plug Power to deliver on its end of the bargain and book the related revenue.

While Plug Power has completed other projects elsewhere in Australia, this electrolyzer project is now that country's largest renewable hydrogen project to reach this level of development. Orica, the customer -- a large mining conglomerate that bills itself as the "world's largest mining-dedicated producer of sodium cyanide, supporting gold processing, silver recovery and other mineral extraction operations" -- operates an existing ammonia production facility on Kooragang Island.

Currently, that facility produces most of its electricity from natural gas. Plug Power's proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer will use renewable energy sources to produce hydrogen fuel, offsetting around 7.5% of the facility's natural gas usage.

To put this project into perspective, Plug Power has now deployed around 320 MW of its GenEco electrolyzer systems across six continents. For comparison, one of Plug Power's biggest installed systems is a 100-MW Galp project in Portugal. That system is now one of Europe's largest electrolyzer installations. It is expected to be fully online by the end of this year. So while this 50-MW system in Australia is meaningful, it is not a game changer in any large sense.

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Still, Plug Power's management team wants this development to convince investors of its intended growth trajectory. As a press release reads, "The HVHH project adds to Plug's growing portfolio of landmark hydrogen projects ... as the company's global pipeline continues to advance from development into execution."

Should investors buy into the hype? There's still one clear reason to remain cautious.

Here's why I'm still staying away from Plug Power stock Plug Power is clearly gaining traction with its GenEco hydrogen electrolyzers. Last year, the company delivered 185 MW of GenEco systems, a 203% growth over the previous year. The company's project pipeline suggests this growth will continue. In April, for example, Plug Power was selected to deliver a 275-MW GenEco PEM electrolyzer system in Canada.

This project alone, when delivered, would give the company positive year-over-year growth. Other projects in the pipeline, including its Australian 50-MW system, will only further those growth rates.

Image source: Getty Images.

There are concerns about the long-term competitiveness of Plug Power's PEM systems. My biggest worry is simply shareholder dilution. Plug Power's management team seems to be taking profitability seriously. Last quarter, losses narrowed significantly following large improvements in gross margins.  

PLUG Average Diluted Shares Outstanding (Quarterly) data by YCharts.

However, net losses continue to accumulate, forcing the company to sell more stock to stay afloat. Over the past five years, Plug Power's outstanding share count has soared by nearly 700%. Over the past 12 months alone, diluted shares are up roughly 20%. I expect more dilution to occur until the company is sustainably profitable.

So the issue isn't whether Plug Power is gaining market traction. Rather, it's a question of whether this growth can offset ongoing shareholder dilution. While Plug Power's business seems to be improving, I'm still comfortable remaining on the sidelines until the financials have stabilized.

Posted by Defense World Staff on Jul 18th, 2026

Aljian Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings in shares of NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA – Free Report) by 1.6% in the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 247,033 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock after purchasing an additional 3,921 shares during the period. NVIDIA comprises 8.9% of Aljian Capital Management LLC’s portfolio, making the stock its 5th biggest holding. Aljian Capital Management LLC’s holdings in NVIDIA were worth $43,083,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other institutional investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Lifetime Wealth Management P.C. acquired a new stake in shares of NVIDIA during the 4th quarter worth about $26,000. Longview Financial Advisors Inc. acquired a new position in NVIDIA in the first quarter valued at about $27,000. Longfellow Investment Management Co. LLC grew its stake in NVIDIA by 47.9% during the second quarter. Longfellow Investment Management Co. LLC now owns 207 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock worth $33,000 after buying an additional 67 shares during the last quarter. Inspire Investing LLC acquired a new stake in shares of NVIDIA during the fourth quarter worth approximately $44,000. Finally, AlphaCentric Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in shares of NVIDIA during the fourth quarter worth approximately $45,000. 65.27% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

NVIDIA Stock Down 2.2% NASDAQ:NVDA opened at $202.81 on Friday. The company has a quick ratio of 2.85, a current ratio of 3.44 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.04. NVIDIA Corporation has a 12-month low of $164.07 and a 12-month high of $236.54. The stock’s fifty day simple moving average is $209.63 and its 200-day simple moving average is $195.10. The firm has a market capitalization of $4.91 trillion, a P/E ratio of 31.06, a P/E/G ratio of 0.46 and a beta of 2.21.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA – Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, May 20th. The computer hardware maker reported $1.87 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.76 by $0.11. The firm had revenue of $81.61 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $78.42 billion. NVIDIA had a return on equity of 96.94% and a net margin of 62.97%.The company’s quarterly revenue was up 85.2% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm posted $0.81 earnings per share. Equities research analysts expect that NVIDIA Corporation will post 8.81 earnings per share for the current year.

NVIDIA Increases Dividend The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, June 26th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, June 4th were issued a $0.25 dividend. This represents a $1.00 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.5%. This is a boost from NVIDIA’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.01. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, June 4th. NVIDIA’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 15.31%.

NVIDIA declared that its board has authorized a stock repurchase program on Wednesday, May 20th that permits the company to buyback $80.00 billion in shares. This buyback authorization permits the computer hardware maker to repurchase up to 1.5% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares buyback programs are usually a sign that the company’s board of directors believes its shares are undervalued.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In Several research analysts have recently commented on the company. Rothschild & Co Redburn boosted their target price on NVIDIA from $280.00 to $300.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, May 26th. Wall Street Zen cut NVIDIA from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Saturday, July 4th. HSBC reiterated a “buy” rating and issued a $325.00 price objective (up from $295.00) on shares of NVIDIA in a research report on Tuesday, May 19th. Barclays reissued an “overweight” rating on shares of NVIDIA in a research note on Thursday, May 21st. Finally, Cantor Fitzgerald restated an “overweight” rating and issued a $350.00 target price on shares of NVIDIA in a research note on Thursday, May 21st. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, forty-eight have issued a Buy rating and three have issued a Hold rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, NVIDIA presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $304.26.

Get Our Latest Research Report on NVDA

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

Positive Sentiment: NVIDIA expanded its AI footprint in Japan with new partnerships across robotics, manufacturing, and public-sector infrastructure, including a national AI infrastructure initiative and the launch of Cosmos 3 Edge and Nemotron-based local AI projects. These moves reinforce NVDA’s role as the core platform for physical AI and could support long-term demand. Japan Government, Industrial Leaders and NVIDIA Launch the World’s First National AI Infrastructure Positive Sentiment: Multiple analysts raised earnings estimates for NVIDIA, with KeyCorp and Erste Group boosting forecasts and maintaining bullish ratings/price targets. That suggests Wall Street still sees strong profit growth ahead. Positive Sentiment: TSMC reported strong AI-driven demand, which is a positive read-through for NVIDIA’s supply chain and ongoing chip demand. TSMC Just Announced Fantastic News for Nvidia Shareholders Neutral Sentiment: Apple briefly overtook NVIDIA as the world’s most valuable company, highlighting a rotation in mega-cap leadership and renewed investor doubts about how much AI upside is already priced into NVDA. Apple dethrones Nvidia as world’s most valuable company, ending the chipmaker’s long run at the top Neutral Sentiment: Several articles point to a broader semiconductor sell-off and “sell the news” behavior in AI and chip stocks, which appears to be pressuring NVDA along with peers rather than reflecting a company-specific setback. Why Nvidia stock is down around 2.5% on Thursday Negative Sentiment: Market commentary from Jim Cramer and other bearish notes on semiconductors suggest some investors are rotating out of chip stocks, adding near-term pressure to NVDA sentiment. Jim Cramer Says Semiconductor Stocks Are “Going Down.” Buy These 2 Dividend Stocks Instead Insiders Place Their Bets In other NVIDIA news, Director Stephen C. Neal sold 15,500 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, June 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $215.73, for a total value of $3,343,815.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director directly owned 116,135 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $25,053,803.55. The trade was a 11.77% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, Director John Dabiri sold 625 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, May 27th. The stock was sold at an average price of $214.00, for a total value of $133,750.00. Following the completion of the sale, the director owned 14,163 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $3,030,882. This trade represents a 4.23% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last three months, insiders have sold 1,901,125 shares of company stock worth $410,583,015. Company insiders own 3.94% of the company’s stock.

NVIDIA Company Profile (Free Report)

NVIDIA Corporation, founded in 1993 and headquartered in Santa Clara, California, is a global technology company that designs and develops graphics processing units (GPUs) and system-on-chip (SoC) technologies. Co-founded by Jensen Huang, who serves as president and chief executive officer, along with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, NVIDIA has grown from a graphics-focused chipmaker into a broad provider of accelerated computing hardware and software for multiple industries.

The company’s product portfolio spans discrete GPUs for gaming and professional visualization (marketed under the GeForce and NVIDIA RTX lines), high-performance data center accelerators used for AI training and inference (including widely adopted platforms such as the A100 and H100 series), and Tegra SoCs for automotive and edge applications.

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I keep buying NVIDIA because every bearish argument I hear collapses the moment I open the earnings report. The fashionable one, that NVIDIA is either hoarding cash or bleeding out from China restrictions, is the loudest and the wrongest, and it keeps handing me chances to add to a position I plan to hold deep into retirement.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) trades today at $207.40, and the analyst target sits at $301.62. My conviction comes from the numbers underneath that gap.

The China Narrative Bears Cannot Let Go Of In Q1 FY2027, NVIDIA shipped zero H20 compute products to China, down from $4.6 billion a year earlier. Revenue still came in at $81.615 billion, up 85.23% year over year, beating estimates by 3.16%. Data Center revenue alone was $75.246 billion, up 92%. Networking, the piece most people ignore, hit $14.800 billion, up 199%. Management then guided Q2 to $91.0 billion, again assuming no China Data Center compute revenue. A company that can absorb a multi-billion-dollar customer loss and still print those numbers does not have a demand problem.

The Cash Hoarding Claim Falls Apart NVIDIA returned roughly $20.0 billion to shareholders in a single quarter through repurchases and dividends. The board added $80.0 billion in fresh buyback authorization on May 18, 2026, on top of $38.5 billion already remaining under the prior plan. Management told analysts they plan to return roughly 50% of free cash flow to shareholders in 2027. The quarterly dividend was raised from $0.01 to $0.25. FY2026 returns totaled $41.1 billion. This is not a company sitting on its wallet.

Why NVIDIA And Not The Obvious Alternatives The efficiency numbers explain why I want NVIDIA reinvesting first and returning second. ROIC of 92.2%. Return on equity of 101.5%. Operating margin of 60.4%. Non-GAAP gross margin of 75.0%. Debt-to-equity of 0.073 and interest coverage above 500x. Free cash flow of $48.554 billion in one quarter.

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Now compare the alternatives a bull on AI chips would reach for. Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) trades at a trailing P/E of 179 and forward P/E of 76, with a return on equity of just 8.06%. Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) is worse on the fundamentals: trailing EPS of -0.6, return on equity of -2.91%, forward P/E of 118, and quarterly earnings down 71.7% year over year. NVIDIA trades at a forward P/E of 23. I am paying less for the future earnings of the category leader than I would for either challenger, and I get the ROIC gap on top.

The Real Risk China export restrictions could tighten further, and NVIDIA has $119.0 billion in supply-related commitments plus $30.0 billion in multi-year cloud service commitments locked in. If AI demand ever softens, that inventory becomes a problem quickly. Reliance on TSMC for manufacture, assembly, packaging, and testing sits underneath everything.

What Keeps The Buy Button Active Jensen Huang told analysts on the May 20, 2026 call that visibility into Blackwell and Rubin revenue reaches $1 trillion from 2025 through calendar 2027, with hyperscale CapEx forecast to exceed $1 trillion by 2027. OpenAI committed to 10 gigawatts of NVIDIA systems. Meta signed on for millions of Blackwell and Rubin GPUs on a multi-year basis. Huang called it “the largest infrastructure expansion in human history.”

Every quarter the bear thesis needs a fresh coat of paint. My conviction only needs the receipts.

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Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Aire Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS – Free Report) during the 1st quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the SEC. The institutional investor acquired 550 shares of the investment management company’s stock, valued at approximately $465,000.

A number of other institutional investors also recently modified their holdings of the stock. Norges Bank bought a new stake in shares of The Goldman Sachs Group in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $2,515,830,000. Corient Private Wealth LLC grew its position in The Goldman Sachs Group by 1,657.7% in the fourth quarter. Corient Private Wealth LLC now owns 2,596,487 shares of the investment management company’s stock worth $2,282,312,000 after acquiring an additional 2,448,767 shares in the last quarter. International Assets Investment Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of The Goldman Sachs Group during the 1st quarter worth $2,024,921,000. Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. increased its stake in shares of The Goldman Sachs Group by 428.4% during the 4th quarter. Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. now owns 556,254 shares of the investment management company’s stock worth $488,947,000 after purchasing an additional 450,984 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Diamant Asset Management Inc. raised its holdings in shares of The Goldman Sachs Group by 84,499.0% during the 1st quarter. Diamant Asset Management Inc. now owns 422,995 shares of the investment management company’s stock valued at $35,785,000 after purchasing an additional 422,495 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 71.21% of the company’s stock.

The Goldman Sachs Group Trading Down 2.7% GS stock opened at $1,066.28 on Friday. The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $691.88 and a fifty-two week high of $1,153.99. The stock has a market capitalization of $314.56 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 16.46, a P/E/G ratio of 1.24 and a beta of 1.30. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.83, a current ratio of 1.11 and a quick ratio of 0.63. The business has a fifty day moving average price of $1,035.20 and a 200 day moving average price of $945.44.

The Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE:GS – Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, July 14th. The investment management company reported $20.98 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $14.47 by $6.51. The firm had revenue of $20.34 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $16.22 billion. The Goldman Sachs Group had a net margin of 15.53% and a return on equity of 18.59%. The Goldman Sachs Group’s revenue was up 39.4% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $10.91 EPS. Analysts expect that The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. will post 64.34 EPS for the current fiscal year.

The Goldman Sachs Group Increases Dividend The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Tuesday, September 29th. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, September 1st will be issued a dividend of $5.00 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, September 1st. This represents a $20.00 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.9%. This is an increase from The Goldman Sachs Group’s previous quarterly dividend of $4.50. The Goldman Sachs Group’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 27.78%.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades Several equities research analysts recently issued reports on the stock. Rothschild & Co Redburn lifted their price objective on shares of The Goldman Sachs Group from $870.00 to $920.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Thursday, June 25th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. increased their price objective on The Goldman Sachs Group from $900.00 to $955.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Wednesday. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods raised their price objective on The Goldman Sachs Group from $1,050.00 to $1,130.00 and gave the company a “market perform” rating in a research note on Wednesday. BNP Paribas Exane reduced their target price on The Goldman Sachs Group from $970.00 to $940.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a report on Friday, April 24th. Finally, Oppenheimer lowered shares of The Goldman Sachs Group from a “market perform” rating to an “underperform” rating in a research note on Tuesday, June 30th. Nine analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, thirteen have issued a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $1,061.43.

View Our Latest Research Report on The Goldman Sachs Group

The Goldman Sachs Group News Roundup Here are the key news stories impacting The Goldman Sachs Group this week:

Positive Sentiment: Goldman Sachs was added to the Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) list, reinforcing bullish sentiment around the stock after its strong quarterly results. Positive Sentiment: The bank also made Zacks’ Strong Buy income stocks list, reflecting investor interest in Goldman Sachs as a dividend and total-return play. Positive Sentiment: Bank of America raised its price target on Goldman Sachs to $1,300 from $1,150 and kept a buy rating, implying additional upside from current levels. Positive Sentiment: JPMorgan and other commentary highlighted Goldman Sachs’ strong first-half M&A performance, along with record Q2 results and a 25% dividend increase plus a $4 billion share repurchase program. Positive Sentiment: Goldman Sachs’ equity underwriting revenue jumped sharply, helped by renewed capital markets activity and AI-related deal flow, which supports optimism for future investment banking revenue. Neutral Sentiment: Separately, Goldman Sachs disclosed a 3.5% voting interest in Qiagen, a portfolio-related filing that is not clearly material to Goldman’s own earnings outlook. Insider Transactions at The Goldman Sachs Group In other news, CFO Denis P. Coleman sold 6,857 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, May 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $973.55, for a total value of $6,675,632.35. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer owned 31,070 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $30,248,198.50. This trade represents a 18.08% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, insider Kathryn H. Ruemmler sold 14,292 shares of The Goldman Sachs Group stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, May 6th. The stock was sold at an average price of $939.07, for a total transaction of $13,421,188.44. Following the sale, the insider owned 15,657 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $14,703,018.99. This represents a 47.72% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. Over the last quarter, insiders sold 32,566 shares of company stock valued at $30,712,978. 0.55% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

About The Goldman Sachs Group (Free Report)

The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc is a global investment banking and financial services firm headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1869 as a commercial paper business, the company has grown into a diversified financial institution that provides a broad range of services to corporations, financial institutions, governments and individuals. The firm is led by Chief Executive Officer David M. Solomon and operates across major financial centers worldwide.

Goldman Sachs’ core businesses include investment banking, global markets, asset and wealth management, and consumer banking.

Read More Five stocks we like better than The Goldman Sachs Group AST SpaceMobile Stock Sinks as SpaceX Fallout Rattles Space Sector Aehr Test Systems Stock Soars on Earnings, Eyes Over 150% Revenue Growth TSMC Just Gave AI Chip Bulls Another Reason to Stay Confident GE Aerospace Faces a Prove-It Moment in Q2 Earnings Want to see what other hedge funds are holding GS? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS – Free Report).

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BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) executives said the asset manager delivered record second-quarter results and its strongest first half on record, driven by broad-based client inflows, higher markets, acquisitions and continued demand for ETFs, private markets and technology offerings.

Chief Financial Officer Martin S. Small said BlackRock generated second-quarter revenue of $7.1 billion, up 31% from a year earlier, while adjusted operating income rose 39% to $2.9 billion. Adjusted earnings per share were $13.91, up 15% year over year. Small said all three measures reached quarterly records.

The firm reported $192 billion of total net inflows in the quarter, contributing to $868 billion of net inflows over the last 12 months. Small said those flows represented 8% organic base fee growth in the second quarter and 10% organic base fee growth over the past year.

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Laurence D. Fink said BlackRock’s assets under management reached a record $15.3 trillion after increasing by more than $1 trillion so far in 2026. “Clients are turning to BlackRock for insight and opportunities, as evident in our results this quarter,” Fink said.

Margins Expand as Revenue Hits Record Small said BlackRock’s adjusted operating margin was 45.9% in the quarter, up 260 basis points from a year ago and the highest level in nearly five years. Excluding performance fees and related compensation, he said the adjusted operating margin would have been 46.5%, also up 260 basis points year over year.

Base fee and securities lending revenue was $5.7 billion, up 29% year over year, reflecting market gains, organic base fee growth and approximately $230 million in base fees from HPS. Performance fees rose to $305 million, including $115 million from HPS, and technology services and subscription revenue increased 13%. Annual contract value, or ACV, rose 15% from a year earlier.

Expenses increased 25% year over year. Small attributed the rise to higher compensation tied to operating income and performance fees, higher headcount from HPS, increased distribution and servicing costs, direct fund expenses and general and administrative expenses related to the acquisition.

BlackRock also raised its planned share repurchase pace. Small said the company repurchased $450 million of shares in the second quarter and now expects to repurchase at least $550 million per quarter going forward, subject to market and other conditions. Fink said BlackRock expects to return more than $5.7 billion to shareholders this year through dividends and buybacks, a 16% increase over 2025.

ETF Inflows Lead the Quarter BlackRock’s iShares ETF platform generated $178 billion of net inflows in the quarter, led by $85 billion in core equity ETFs and $61 billion in index bond ETFs. Small said active ETFs added $20 billion, while “precision” ETFs, including international and sector equity products, added $15 billion.

Fink said iShares now has more than $6 trillion in assets under management globally and is benefiting from increased adoption and category innovation. He said iShares has raised $80 billion year to date in Europe, bringing European AUM to $1.5 trillion. In Asia Pacific, locally domiciled iShares crossed $100 billion in assets during the quarter.

Fink also highlighted growth in active ETFs, saying BlackRock has gathered more than $70 billion in active ETF net inflows over the past year and is leading the industry in active flows in 2026. “In just the last three years, we’ve gone from the seventh largest active ETF manager to the third largest,” Fink said.

Retail net inflows were $19 billion, led by active fixed income, Aperio and liquid alternative funds. Institutional active net inflows totaled $44 billion, driven by private markets, fixed income, systematic strategies, outsourced chief investment officer offerings and target date products. Institutional index strategies saw $41 billion of net outflows, concentrated in low-fee index equities.

Private Markets and Acquisitions Gain Traction Executives said BlackRock’s acquisitions of Global Infrastructure Partners, HPS and Preqin are performing ahead of plan and supporting the company’s 2030 ambitions. Fink said the combined platform is helping accelerate opportunities across public and private markets, particularly in infrastructure, private credit and technology.

Small said private markets saw an aggregate $15 billion of net inflows in the second quarter. He said that included $6 billion from private credit deployment, $5 billion from a mix of infrastructure fundraising and deployment, and $3 billion from partial funding of a private equity solutions outsourcing mandate with a client in Latin America.

Fink said BlackRock has closed about $10 billion in high-grade and infrastructure debt mandates for insurance companies so far in 2026. He said insurers globally are increasingly seeking private markets exposure to earn higher yields, and that collaboration between HPS and GIP is building a pipeline of joint opportunities, particularly in digital infrastructure.

Fink also pointed to the expected close of Aligned Data Centers in the coming weeks, describing it as “the largest data center infrastructure transaction ever announced.” He said the transaction brought together AIP, GIP and MGX.

Technology, Tokenization and Customization Remain Priorities BlackRock executives emphasized technology as a key growth driver. Small said Aladdin, eFront and Preqin are benefiting from client demand for integrated technology, data and analytics across public and private markets. He said regulatory and market developments are increasing the need for private markets transparency and benchmarking.

Fink said creating a seamless analytical platform across public and private markets is “one of the key priorities for BlackRock over the coming year.” He said the company is not yet fully there, but sees strong demand from retail and institutional clients for tools that help them understand risk across entire portfolios.

On digital assets and tokenization, Small said BlackRock has about $110 billion in AUM connected to digital assets and aims, as part of its 2030 plan, to make digital assets a $500 million revenue business. He said the company is working to tokenize long-term investment products, including Treasury funds, iShares ETFs and potentially private markets over time.

Small said BlackRock has filed two registration statements with the SEC for tokenized money market funds. He also said the firm manages $60 billion of reserves for Circle, representing about a quarter of the $300 billion stablecoin market, and wants to be the stablecoin reserve manager of choice.

Executives Point to Structural Growth Themes Fink said he remains optimistic about global markets, citing broadening returns outside the U.S., higher corporate margins and earnings momentum supported by new technology. He said BlackRock benefits directly from capital market expansion because of its scale and client relationships around the world.

The company also highlighted growth in retirement and personalized wealth solutions. Fink said LifePath Paycheck has grown to $30 billion in AUM as plan sponsors focus on retirement income. He said Aperio’s AUM is approaching $200 billion, up more than fourfold since BlackRock acquired the business five years ago, while SpiderRock AUM has nearly tripled to $13 billion since its acquisition two years ago.

Small said Aperio generated $7 billion of net inflows in the second quarter, split roughly evenly between long-only and long-short strategies. He said 2026 Aperio flows of about $20 billion have already surpassed 2025’s record flows of $15 billion.

Fink closed the call by saying BlackRock’s first-half performance represented “the strongest start to a year in our history” and that investments in the platform are showing up in results. “I believe the best of BlackRock is still ahead,” he said.

About BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) BlackRock, Inc is a global investment management firm that provides a broad range of products and services to institutional, intermediary and individual investors. Its core activities include portfolio management across active and index strategies, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) under the iShares brand, fixed income, equity and multi-asset solutions, as well as alternatives such as private equity, real estate and infrastructure. The firm also offers cash management and liquidity solutions and retirement-focused products designed for defined contribution and defined benefit investors.

In addition to traditional investment management, BlackRock is known for its technology and risk management capabilities, most prominently its Aladdin platform, which combines portfolio management, trading and risk analytics and is used both internally and licensed to external clients.

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) is set to pay its next quarterly dividend on July 22, 2026, providing shareholders with another cash distribution as the networking giant continues to benefit from strong AI-driven demand and enterprise infrastructure spending.

According to the dividend data, Cisco’s upcoming dividend payment is $0.42 per share, unchanged from the previous quarter. 

Cisco dividend payment date. Source: Dividend.com The company currently offers a forward annual dividend of $1.68 per share and a dividend yield of approximately 1.53%.

Cisco dividend details. Source: Dividend.com For investors holding 100 shares of CSCO stock, the upcoming dividend payment will amount to $42 before applicable taxes.

On an annualized basis, an investor holding 100 Cisco shares would generate about $168 in dividend income, assuming the company maintains its current payout rate of $1.68 per share annually.

Notably, Cisco has increased its dividend for 14 consecutive years, highlighting its commitment to returning capital to shareholders. 

The company pays dividends every quarter and currently maintains a forward payout ratio of 35.11%, leaving room for continued shareholder distributions while funding growth initiatives.

Cisco stock fundamentals  The latest CSCO dividend payout comes as Cisco continues to post strong operational performance in 2026. 

The company reported fiscal third-quarter revenue of $15.84 billion, up 12% year-over-year, while non-GAAP earnings per share reached $1.06.

AI infrastructure has emerged as a major growth driver for Cisco, with the company reporting $5.3 billion in AI-related orders year-to-date and raising its fiscal 2026 AI order target to $9 billion.

Despite concerns about valuation following a strong rally earlier in the year, analysts continue to view Cisco as a key beneficiary of ongoing investments in AI networking, data center infrastructure, and enterprise technology upgrades.

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Shares of Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU – Get Free Report) have been given an average rating of “Moderate Buy” by the thirty-two research firms that are covering the firm, MarketBeat reports. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a sell recommendation, seven have assigned a hold recommendation and twenty-two have assigned a buy recommendation to the company. The average 1-year price objective among analysts that have covered the stock in the last year is $490.3871.

INTU has been the topic of several research reports. Jefferies Financial Group reduced their price objective on Intuit from $650.00 to $550.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, May 21st. Freedom Capital cut Intuit from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Thursday, May 21st. Wells Fargo & Company dropped their price target on Intuit from $425.00 to $360.00 and set an “equal weight” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, May 21st. Truist Financial cut their price target on Intuit from $500.00 to $410.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, May 21st. Finally, Citigroup decreased their price objective on Intuit from $649.00 to $591.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, May 21st.

Get Our Latest Research Report on Intuit

Intuit Trading Down 1.3% Shares of INTU opened at $291.09 on Friday. The firm has a market capitalization of $79.62 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 17.63, a PEG ratio of 1.08 and a beta of 1.00. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.26, a current ratio of 1.45 and a quick ratio of 1.45. Intuit has a 1-year low of $252.84 and a 1-year high of $813.70. The company has a 50-day moving average of $303.20 and a 200 day moving average of $406.56.

Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU – Get Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Wednesday, May 20th. The software maker reported $12.80 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $12.57 by $0.23. Intuit had a net margin of 21.91% and a return on equity of 25.18%. The business had revenue of $8.56 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $8.54 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $11.65 EPS. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 10.4% compared to the same quarter last year. Intuit has set its Q4 2026 guidance at 3.560-3.620 EPS and its FY 2026 guidance at 23.800-23.850 EPS. On average, research analysts expect that Intuit will post 18.18 EPS for the current year.

Intuit Announces Dividend The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, July 17th. Investors of record on Thursday, July 9th were issued a dividend of $1.20 per share. This represents a $4.80 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.6%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, July 9th. Intuit’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 29.07%.

Insider Activity at Intuit In related news, Director Vasant M. Prabhu bought 1,250 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Friday, May 22nd. The shares were acquired at an average price of $309.45 per share, with a total value of $386,812.50. Following the transaction, the director owned 1,250 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $386,812.50. The trade was a ∞ increase in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, Director Richard L. Dalzell sold 338 shares of Intuit stock in a transaction on Thursday, June 11th. The shares were sold at an average price of $279.86, for a total value of $94,592.68. Following the completion of the transaction, the director owned 12,326 shares in the company, valued at $3,449,554.36. This represents a 2.67% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last three months, insiders have sold 1,239 shares of company stock worth $348,354. 2.49% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Intuit Institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Joseph Group Capital Management purchased a new stake in shares of Intuit during the fourth quarter valued at about $25,000. Intesa Sanpaolo Wealth Management purchased a new position in shares of Intuit in the 4th quarter worth approximately $25,000. HHM Wealth Advisors LLC raised its stake in shares of Intuit by 75.0% during the 1st quarter. HHM Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 70 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $30,000 after acquiring an additional 30 shares in the last quarter. Whipplewood Advisors LLC bought a new position in shares of Intuit during the 1st quarter worth approximately $30,000. Finally, CrossGen Wealth LLC bought a new position in shares of Intuit during the 1st quarter worth approximately $32,000. Institutional investors own 83.66% of the company’s stock.

More Intuit News Here are the key news stories impacting Intuit this week:

Positive Sentiment: Intuit is being viewed as a long-term AI beneficiary as it embeds AI across its platform to automate financial workflows, expand higher-value services, and support future growth. Intuit Reinvents Itself With AI: Should You Buy the Stock? Positive Sentiment: The company’s AI initiative could improve productivity and deepen customer usage, which may support margins and recurring revenue over time. Intuit Reinvents Itself With AI: Should You Buy the Stock? Neutral Sentiment: One analyst note referenced Intuit being upgraded to “strong sell,” but the item provides no detailed rationale and appears secondary to the broader legal-news flow. Intuit upgraded by Piper Sandler to strong sell Negative Sentiment: Multiple law firms announced or reminded investors about a pending securities class action against Intuit, with a lead-plaintiff deadline of September 8, 2026, creating a legal overhang for the stock. Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman LLC Urges Intuit Inc. Investors to Act Negative Sentiment: The lawsuit alleges securities fraud and investor harm related to the period when Intuit’s stock dropped after guidance changes, which may keep pressure on shares near term. Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP Announces that Intuit Inc. Investors with Substantial Losses Have Opportunity to Lead Class Action Lawsuit Negative Sentiment: Several additional firms filed or promoted similar class-action notices, reinforcing concerns that Intuit may face prolonged litigation and headline risk. Pomerantz Law Firm Announces the Filing of a Class Action Against Intuit Inc. and Certain Officers Intuit Company Profile (Get Free Report)

Intuit Inc (NASDAQ: INTU) is a financial software company headquartered in Mountain View, California, that develops and sells cloud-based financial management and compliance products for individuals, small businesses, self-employed workers and accounting professionals. Founded in 1983 by Scott Cook and Tom Proulx, the company has grown from desktop tax and accounting software into a diversified provider of online financial tools. As of my latest update, Sasan Goodarzi serves as Chief Executive Officer.

Intuit’s product portfolio includes QuickBooks, its flagship accounting and business-management platform that offers bookkeeping, payroll, payments and invoicing capabilities; TurboTax, a tax-preparation and filing service aimed at individual taxpayers; and Mint, a consumer personal-finance and budgeting app.

Featured Stories Five stocks we like better than Intuit AST SpaceMobile Stock Sinks as SpaceX Fallout Rattles Space Sector Aehr Test Systems Stock Soars on Earnings, Eyes Over 150% Revenue Growth TSMC Just Gave AI Chip Bulls Another Reason to Stay Confident GE Aerospace Faces a Prove-It Moment in Q2 Earnings

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« PREVIOUS HEADLINEAllspring Global Investments Holdings LLC Has $66.92 Million Stock Holdings in The Progressive Corporation $PGR

Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC trimmed its stake in shares of S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI – Free Report) by 19.0% in the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm owned 213,654 shares of the business services provider’s stock after selling 50,037 shares during the quarter. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC owned about 0.07% of S&P Global worth $90,839,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of the company. Norges Bank bought a new stake in shares of S&P Global during the fourth quarter worth approximately $2,398,991,000. Cardano Risk Management B.V. lifted its holdings in shares of S&P Global by 858.3% during the fourth quarter. Cardano Risk Management B.V. now owns 1,760,230 shares of the business services provider’s stock worth $919,879,000 after buying an additional 1,576,544 shares in the last quarter. T. Rowe Price Investment Management Inc. boosted its position in shares of S&P Global by 2,256.7% in the fourth quarter. T. Rowe Price Investment Management Inc. now owns 1,446,633 shares of the business services provider’s stock valued at $755,996,000 after acquiring an additional 1,385,249 shares during the period. Capital International Investors boosted its position in shares of S&P Global by 43.6% in the fourth quarter. Capital International Investors now owns 3,037,912 shares of the business services provider’s stock valued at $1,587,910,000 after acquiring an additional 922,433 shares during the period. Finally, TCI Fund Management Ltd. grew its stake in shares of S&P Global by 5.4% in the fourth quarter. TCI Fund Management Ltd. now owns 11,790,310 shares of the business services provider’s stock valued at $6,161,498,000 after acquiring an additional 600,440 shares in the last quarter. 87.17% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Insider Activity at S&P Global In related news, CEO Martina Cheung acquired 2,322 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, April 29th. The shares were bought at an average cost of $429.93 per share, with a total value of $998,297.46. Following the completion of the purchase, the chief executive officer directly owned 27,518 shares in the company, valued at $11,830,813.74. The trade was a 9.22% increase in their ownership of the stock. The purchase was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at this link. Also, CEO Catherine R. Clay bought 2,500 shares of S&P Global stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, May 1st. The stock was bought at an average price of $431.39 per share, for a total transaction of $1,078,475.00. Following the completion of the acquisition, the chief executive officer directly owned 2,500 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,078,475. The trade was a ∞ increase in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this purchase are available in the official SEC disclosure. Insiders purchased 5,974 shares of company stock worth $2,576,775 over the last three months. Company insiders own 0.03% of the company’s stock.

Key Stories Impacting S&P Global Here are the key news stories impacting S&P Global this week:

Positive Sentiment: Stifel Nicolaus raised its price target on S&P Global to $521 from $489 and kept a buy rating, implying roughly 15.6% upside from the current share price. Benzinga Street Insider Positive Sentiment: S&P Global Energy said booming U.S. LNG exports could add $1.4 trillion to GDP through 2040 and support hundreds of thousands of jobs, reinforcing the company’s research and energy-market credibility. Reuters Positive Sentiment: S&P Global Market Intelligence launched ETF Intelligence, a new analytics product aimed at the fast-growing ETF market, which could help expand data and subscription revenue over time. PR Newswire Neutral Sentiment: Erste Group Bank lowered its FY2026 EPS estimate for S&P Global to $18.60 from $19.62, which is below the current consensus estimate of $19.49 and may temper expectations. MarketBeat Neutral Sentiment: Separate commentary flagged the stock as expensive on fair value and earnings, suggesting valuation remains a concern for some investors. Yahoo Finance Negative Sentiment: One market report said S&P Global underperformed peers on Wednesday, indicating some relative weakness versus competitors. MarketWatch Wall Street Analyst Weigh In A number of research firms recently commented on SPGI. Morgan Stanley lowered their price target on shares of S&P Global from $557.00 to $525.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research report on Tuesday, July 7th. Daiwa Securities Group cut their price objective on shares of S&P Global from $490.00 to $485.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, May 20th. Royal Bank Of Canada decreased their target price on shares of S&P Global from $560.00 to $510.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research report on Tuesday, July 7th. Rothschild & Co Redburn lowered their target price on shares of S&P Global from $540.00 to $520.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, June 18th. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group dropped their price target on shares of S&P Global from $539.00 to $490.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, July 1st. Seventeen analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and one has given a Hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, S&P Global has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $533.88.

Get Our Latest Report on SPGI

S&P Global Stock Performance S&P Global stock opened at $450.57 on Friday. The business has a 50 day moving average of $421.35 and a 200-day moving average of $445.32. The company has a market capitalization of $133.37 billion, a P/E ratio of 28.52, a P/E/G ratio of 2.21 and a beta of 1.08. S&P Global Inc. has a 1 year low of $381.61 and a 1 year high of $579.05. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34, a current ratio of 0.68 and a quick ratio of 0.68.

S&P Global (NYSE:SPGI – Get Free Report) last posted its earnings results on Tuesday, April 28th. The business services provider reported $4.97 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.82 by $0.15. The firm had revenue of $4.17 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $4.08 billion. S&P Global had a net margin of 30.37% and a return on equity of 17.26%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 10.4% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $4.37 EPS. S&P Global has set its FY 2026 guidance at 19.400-19.650 EPS. On average, equities research analysts predict that S&P Global Inc. will post 19.32 earnings per share for the current year.

S&P Global Dividend Announcement The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, September 10th. Investors of record on Wednesday, August 26th will be issued a $0.97 dividend. This represents a $3.88 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.9%. The ex-dividend date is Wednesday, August 26th. S&P Global’s dividend payout ratio is presently 24.56%.

S&P Global Profile (Free Report)

S&P Global is a leading provider of financial information, analytics and benchmark indices that serve investors, issuers, corporations and public institutions worldwide. The company operates through well-known businesses that include credit ratings, market intelligence and index licensing, as well as commodity and energy information services. Its products and services are used to assess creditworthiness, inform investment decisions, construct and track benchmark portfolios, and support risk and commodity market analysis.

S&P Global Ratings provides independent credit ratings, research and data used by fixed income investors and capital market participants to evaluate issuer and transaction risk.

Featured Stories Five stocks we like better than S&P Global AST SpaceMobile Stock Sinks as SpaceX Fallout Rattles Space Sector Aehr Test Systems Stock Soars on Earnings, Eyes Over 150% Revenue Growth TSMC Just Gave AI Chip Bulls Another Reason to Stay Confident GE Aerospace Faces a Prove-It Moment in Q2 Earnings Want to see what other hedge funds are holding SPGI? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI – Free Report).

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Artificial intelligence has turned power infrastructure into one of the market’s hottest investment themes in 2026. As hyperscale data centers multiply, companies that can supply electricity quickly have become Wall Street favorites. That enthusiasm has lifted everything from utilities to turbine manufacturers and fuel cell providers. 

Yet the same growth story that fueled many of those gains is beginning to run into a less predictable obstacle: local opposition. For investors, the next phase of the AI infrastructure buildout may depend as much on regulators and communities as it does on technology. That shift matters for Bloom Energy (NYSE:BE).

Momentum Is Moving the Wrong Direction Bloom Energy has delivered an enviable return in 2026, with the stock climbing 149% year to date. Yet that headline figure hides a growing loss of momentum. Shares now sit roughly 39% below the June peak after investors began reassessing how quickly the company’s biggest opportunities can translate into revenue.

The first blow came earlier this month when a short seller questioned Bloom’s long-term growth assumptions and customer concentration. While the market didn’t fully embrace the bearish thesis, it added another layer of uncertainty just as expectations for AI infrastructure spending had become increasingly optimistic.

Now another development has put the spotlight back on execution risk.

Project Jupiter Faces Another Roadblock Oracle‘s (NYSE:ORCL | ORCL Price Prediction) proposed Stargate campus in New Mexico, called Project Jupiter, represents a planned $165 billion investment, making it one of the largest AI infrastructure projects under development. The project originally planned to rely on a natural gas-fired power plant, but following concerns from local officials and residents over emissions and water consumption, that was abandoned in favor of deploying up to 2.45 gigawatts of Bloom Energy’s solid oxide fuel cell technology.

That made the project one of Bloom’s most visible growth opportunities. Unfortunately for shareholders, the project was rejected by New Mexico regulators for a second time. Although the fuel cell approach remains under consideration, the required air permit application is still pending. The New Mexico Environment Department has ordered a public hearing, but as of mid-July no hearing date has been scheduled.

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

That doesn’t necessarily kill the project. It does push revenue further into the future, which matters for a stock priced around aggressive growth expectations.

A Bigger Trend Could Matter Even More Project Jupiter may be only one facility, but it highlights a broader challenge. Communities across the country are becoming more vocal about data center construction because of concerns over electricity demand, water consumption, land use, and environmental impacts. Until recently, most opposition remained local.

Now the issue has expanded. New York recently became the first state to approve a one-year statewide moratorium on new data center construction, raising the possibility that other states could adopt similar policies.

For Bloom Energy, that’s an important development because its growth narrative depends heavily on the rapid expansion of AI data centers. Delays don’t eliminate demand for electricity, but they can postpone orders for fuel cells, stretching out revenue recognition and making quarterly growth less predictable.

Key Takeaway In short, Bloom Energy remains well positioned to benefit from AI-driven power demand, and its fuel cell technology still offers advantages over traditional natural gas generation in locations where emissions and water use are major concerns. That said, investors should recognize that regulatory approvals are becoming just as important as technological advantages.

A 149% gain this year shows investors continue to believe in Bloom’s long-term opportunity. A 39% decline from its June high shows the market is also beginning to price in execution risk. Ultimately, if more data center projects encounter permitting delays or community resistance, Bloom’s growth could arrive more slowly than many shareholders have been expecting. That’s a risk investors shouldn’t ignore, even if the long-term demand for AI power infrastructure remains intact.

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

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Posted by Defense World Staff on Jul 18th, 2026

Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC lifted its holdings in shares of Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST – Free Report) by 18.6% in the 1st quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm owned 694,157 shares of the company’s stock after buying an additional 109,096 shares during the quarter. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC owned approximately 0.21% of Vistra worth $106,872,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Fideuram Intesa Sanpaolo Private Banking S.P.A. purchased a new position in shares of Vistra in the fourth quarter worth about $25,000. Mcguire Capital Advisors Inc. acquired a new stake in Vistra in the 4th quarter valued at about $28,000. Kemnay Advisory Services Inc. acquired a new stake in Vistra in the 4th quarter valued at about $30,000. Strive Financial Group LLC purchased a new position in Vistra in the 4th quarter worth approximately $33,000. Finally, Salomon & Ludwin LLC lifted its stake in Vistra by 74.8% in the 4th quarter. Salomon & Ludwin LLC now owns 215 shares of the company’s stock worth $35,000 after purchasing an additional 92 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 90.88% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades A number of equities research analysts have recently issued reports on the company. Seaport Research Partners restated a “buy” rating and issued a $230.00 price target on shares of Vistra in a research report on Monday, June 15th. TD Cowen reduced their price objective on Vistra from $253.00 to $230.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Monday, May 4th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut their target price on Vistra from $240.00 to $231.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, April 30th. Morgan Stanley reissued an “overweight” rating and set a $210.00 price target on shares of Vistra in a research report on Wednesday, June 24th. Finally, Weiss Ratings lowered shares of Vistra from a “hold (c+)” rating to a “hold (c)” rating in a report on Thursday. Two analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirteen have assigned a Buy rating and one has issued a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and a consensus price target of $230.62.

Read Our Latest Report on VST

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

Positive Sentiment: Scotiabank raised its FY2026 and FY2027 earnings estimates for Vistra, while keeping an Outperform rating and a $298 price target, reinforcing the view that earnings can keep growing. Scotiabank Raises Vistra Estimates Positive Sentiment: News that Vistra secured PJM capacity points to better future revenue visibility, which investors typically view as supportive for utility and power producer stocks. Vistra Secures PJM Capacity Positive Sentiment: Coverage highlighting rising demand from data centers and increased capital investments in nuclear, solar, storage, and gas assets suggests Vistra could benefit from long-term load growth and reliable earnings expansion. Vistra Benefiting From Data Center Demand Positive Sentiment: KeyBanc reaffirmed its Buy rating, adding to the bullish analyst tone around the stock. KeyBanc Sticks to Buy Rating Neutral Sentiment: Vistra was also mentioned in media coverage and trading commentary as a stock showing momentum, which may reflect investor enthusiasm but does not add new fundamental information. Vistra Rises Higher Than Market Insiders Place Their Bets In other Vistra news, CAO Margaret Montemayor sold 4,600 shares of Vistra stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, June 2nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $160.00, for a total value of $736,000.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief accounting officer owned 9,760 shares in the company, valued at $1,561,600. The trade was a 32.03% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. Also, Director Paul M. Barbas sold 244 shares of Vistra stock in a transaction on Monday, June 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $153.00, for a total transaction of $37,332.00. Following the transaction, the director owned 53,006 shares in the company, valued at $8,109,918. The trade was a 0.46% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders sold a total of 41,588 shares of company stock valued at $6,739,227 in the last quarter. Corporate insiders own 0.92% of the company’s stock.

Vistra Stock Up 1.7% Vistra stock opened at $155.12 on Friday. The company has a market capitalization of $52.30 billion, a P/E ratio of 25.98 and a beta of 1.40. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 5.51, a quick ratio of 0.79 and a current ratio of 0.90. Vistra Corp. has a fifty-two week low of $132.66 and a fifty-two week high of $219.82. The stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $154.14 and a 200-day simple moving average of $158.42.

Vistra (NYSE:VST – Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, May 7th. The company reported $2.87 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.32 by $1.55. The company had revenue of $5.64 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $5.22 billion. Vistra had a return on equity of 105.64% and a net margin of 11.52%. Equities research analysts expect that Vistra Corp. will post 9.53 earnings per share for the current year.

Vistra Increases Dividend The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Tuesday, June 30th. Shareholders of record on Monday, June 22nd were issued a $0.229 dividend. This is a positive change from Vistra’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.23. The ex-dividend date was Monday, June 22nd. This represents a $0.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.6%. Vistra’s payout ratio is currently 15.41%.

About Vistra (Free Report)

Vistra (NYSE: VST) is an integrated power company that develops, owns and operates electricity generation and retail businesses in the United States. The company’s operations span wholesale power production—through a diversified fleet of thermal and lower‑carbon generation assets—and retail electricity supply to residential, commercial and industrial customers. Vistra serves organized wholesale markets and competitive retail markets, with a notable presence in Texas and other regional U.S. power markets.

Vistra’s core activities include the ownership and operation of generation facilities, the commercial dispatch and optimization of those assets into wholesale markets, and the sale of electricity and related services to end-use customers through its retail brands.

Featured Stories Five stocks we like better than Vistra AST SpaceMobile Stock Sinks as SpaceX Fallout Rattles Space Sector Aehr Test Systems Stock Soars on Earnings, Eyes Over 150% Revenue Growth TSMC Just Gave AI Chip Bulls Another Reason to Stay Confident GE Aerospace Faces a Prove-It Moment in Q2 Earnings Want to see what other hedge funds are holding VST? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST – Free Report).

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Alphabet (GOOGL 2.05%) (GOOG 2.06%) is a digital advertising juggernaut. That goes without saying. In the first quarter, it collected $77.3 billion in ad revenue, up 16% year over year and representing 70% of the company's total top line. This figure puts the business significantly ahead of its industry peer, Meta Platforms.

But Alphabet's Google Cloud division, which posted 63% year-over-year revenue growth in Q1, is the main attraction. That sales gain matters more than the company's advertising operations.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

The market is locked in on Alphabet's cloud performance Google Cloud is really hitting its stride. In addition to the robust revenue jump mentioned, this segment reported a monster 203% surge in operating income. Advertising growth metrics don't hold a candle to these figures.

The market is so focused on the overall cloud market these days. And in Alphabet's case, its shareholders are locked in on how Google Cloud performs. That's because hyperscalers are spending incredible amounts of money to build data centers to capture artificial intelligence (AI)-related demand.

Alphabet's capital expenditures (capex) will go from $91 billion in 2025 to a projected $185 billion (at the midpoint) in 2026. This money is mostly directed toward expanding the technical infrastructure to support Google Cloud.

Therefore, it's not outlandish to assume that how Alphabet's stock performs in the coming years is perhaps more tied to the cloud division than to advertising. This is now an extremely capital-intensive operation, having also raised ample external financing, evolving from the asset-light structure investors once loved. In fact, Alphabet didn't conduct any share buybacks last quarter, upending a key tenet of its capital allocation policy that had been in place for a decade.

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Alphabet faces sky-high risks and sky-high upside When it was revealed that Meta was building a cloud segment to monetize its excess computing capacity, the social media stock immediately popped 9%. That's a clear sign of just how important it is to the investment community that these big AI spenders earn a satisfactory return on invested capital sooner rather than later.

Alphabet's $185 billion in forecasted 2026 capex equates to 81% of the company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization that analysts predict for the year. The capital outlays present a significant risk going forward, one that shareholders haven't had to worry about in the past.

However, the potential upside is also massive. If AI enables Google Cloud customers to create new products and services, boost revenue, and cut costs in ways that weren't possible before, which is the trillion-dollar question facing the global economy right now, then the capex might prove to be justified.

Elon Musk's space transportation, satellite internet connectivity, and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure company, Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX 5.43%), went public on June 12 with an opening price of $150 that day. In the days that followed, stock quickly rallied to an all-time high of $225.64, resulting in a market capitalization of almost $3 trillion.

However, as of the market close on Thursday, July 16, SpaceX stock was down 45% to just $125 as of mid-afternoon Friday. Although Wall Street is forecasting significant revenue growth for the company, its stock continues to trade at a sky-high valuation, which could lead to further volatility from here.

Should retail investors take this opportunity to buy the dip, or would they be better advised to steer clear?

Image source: The Motley Fool.

SpaceX is chasing $28.5 trillion worth of opportunities Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a clear mission to make the human race interplanetary, but in the years since, it has expanded its focus. The company went on to develop the world's first reusable rocket, which dramatically lowered the cost of launching humans and commercial payloads into orbit, and also reduced the downtime between launches.

The Falcon 9 rocket is responsible for most of SpaceX's successful launches to date, but its Falcon Heavy and Starship rockets have much higher payload capacities. This means they can carry more satellites (and eventually humans) into space per trip, further reducing costs. Starship is expected to enter regular service in a couple of years with a payload capacity of 100 tons, whereas Falcon 9 can carry a maximum of 23 tons.

However, launching astronauts and commercial payloads into space is actually SpaceX's least valuable business, with an addressable market of around $370 billion. The company's satellite internet connectivity segment is capturing a slice of a much larger opportunity worth $1.6 trillion. So far, SpaceX has sent over 9,600 of its Starlink satellites into orbit, where they provide wireless broadband internet access to 10.3 million paying customers here on Earth.

The company will start launching its new V3 satellites later this year, which will offer 10 times the bandwidth of its current V2 satellites. This is where Starship will become especially valuable, because it can deploy 60 satellites at a time, whereas Falcon 9 has a maximum capacity of just 27.

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But over the long term, SpaceX actually thinks AI infrastructure will be its most valuable opportunity. The company only entered this business in February when it acquired one of Elon Musk's other companies, xAI, which came with data centers like Colossus and Colossus II. Since then, it has signed agreements to rent billions of dollars' worth of its spare computing capacity to AI developers such as Anthropic, Alphabet, and Reflection AI.

In the future, SpaceX wants to launch clusters of satellites containing AI computing servers into space, where they can run on solar energy and won't need complicated cooling systems. This infrastructure would use Starlink for its data transmission needs, so the company already has a massive advantage over any other competitors aiming to operate orbital data centers. Overall, SpaceX values its total addressable market opportunity in AI at $26.5 trillion.

Investors are still paying a huge premium for SpaceX stock SpaceX generated $18.7 billion in total revenue during 2025, which was up 33% from 2024. The internet connectivity business brought in $11.4 billion, while the space segment generated $4.1 billion, and AI infrastructure delivered $3.2 billion. But that order looks set to change in 2026 and beyond, because of the value of its recent cloud computing deals.

SpaceX has agreed to lease up to $1.25 billion worth of data center capacity per month to Anthropic, plus another $920 million worth of capacity per month to Alphabet, and $150 million per month to Reflection AI. These deals could amount to tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue over the next few years.

As a result, Wall Street analysts think SpaceX could more than double its total revenue to $39.2 billion in 2026, and then grow it to $72.7 billion in 2027.

That growth potential explains why some investors are willing to pay a hefty premium for SpaceX stock, which currently trades at a price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of 88. That is 14 times the 6.3 P/S ratio of the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 index, suggesting SpaceX is heavily overvalued compared to its big-tech peers.

Even if we value SpaceX based on its potential 2027 revenue, its forward P/S ratio is still 23.4, which is nearly 4 times higher than where the Nasdaq-100 trades today. And the company is not yet profitable.

Therefore, even after its 45% decline from its peak and its 17% drop from its first-day opening price, SpaceX stock is far from cheap. In fact, I think its lofty valuation leaves it exposed to even more downside potential, so I personally won't be buying this dip.

Tesla (TSLA 2.47%) investors already know the headline numbers for the second quarter. The electric vehicle and energy company said earlier this month that it delivered 480,126 vehicles during the period, up about 25% year over year and more than it has delivered in any second quarter in its history. It also deployed 13.5 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of energy storage products, up about 41% from the year-ago period.

What investors don't know yet is what those record deliveries did to Tesla's profitability. That answer arrives on Wednesday, July 22, when the company posts its second-quarter results after market close, followed by a live management webcast at 5:30 p.m. ET.

With the stock closing Wednesday at $394.46, down about 12% year to date, Tesla commands a market capitalization of about $1.5 trillion and trades at about 360 times earnings. Investors paying that kind of premium aren't buying delivery counts. They need evidence that Tesla can turn all this volume into profit.

That's why I think one line in next week's report matters more than any other: automotive gross margin excluding regulatory credit sales.

Tesla Cybercab. Image source: Tesla.

A four-quarter streak Tesla's core profitability has quietly improved for a full year now. The company's automotive gross margin excluding regulatory credits was 12.5% in the first quarter of 2025. It climbed to 15% in the second quarter, 15.4% in the third, 17.9% in the fourth, and 19.2% in the first quarter of 2026.

That's four consecutive quarters of expansion.

This metric is worth attention because it strips out regulatory credits, the emissions credits Tesla sells to other automakers. That revenue is nearly pure profit, but it says nothing about the economics of building cars. And its contribution is shrinking anyway -- credits added 3.7 percentage points to Tesla's automotive gross margin in the first quarter of 2025, but just 1.9 points a year later.

However, there is a caveat in the streak. Tesla said its first-quarter results included one-time benefits related to warranty adjustments and tariffs, which helped both its automotive margin and its 4.2% operating margin.

So the July 22 report has to do two things at once. It has to show that the margin held up near 19% on record volume, and it has to show that Tesla managed this without one-time help.

If the margin excluding credits holds in the high teens, the bull case gets simpler. It would mean Tesla just posted its best second quarter of deliveries ever while preserving the pricing gains and cost work of the past year.

If the number steps back toward the mid-teens, the record quarter looks bought (volume achieved through discounts), and the profit story supporting a $1.5 trillion valuation arguably gets much harder to tell.

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What about robotaxi and energy? Plenty of investors will listen for other things on the call, and reasonably so.

Tesla's energy business deployed 13.5 GWh of storage in the quarter, its second-biggest quarter ever behind the 14.2 GWh it deployed in the fourth quarter of 2025. The segment carried a gross margin of nearly 40% in the first quarter, making it a meaningful profit contributor. Still, energy revenue actually declined 12% year over year in Q1, so deployments alone don't guarantee segment growth.

Then there's autonomy. Tesla ended the first quarter with 1.28 million active Full Self-Driving (Supervised) subscriptions, up 51% year over year, and it launched unsupervised robotaxi rides in Dallas and Houston in April. A subscription base growing that fast is exactly the kind of high-margin revenue the valuation needs more of, so any update on robotaxi expansion or software take rates could move the stock, too.

But those initiatives are still mostly about 2027 and beyond. The margin line shows whether today's business, the one funding all of those bets, is getting more profitable or less as it scales. At 360 times earnings, Tesla doesn't have the luxury of letting profitability drift while investors wait for autonomy.

So when the report lands on July 22, the delivery recap won't be the news -- investors already have it. The number worth finding is the automotive gross margin excluding regulatory credits. If the streak extends to five quarters without one-time help, record deliveries and improving profitability would make a powerful combination. If it doesn't, investors may opt to treat the record quarter far less kindly.

Since Greg Abel took over as Berkshire Hathaway's (BRKA 0.34%)(BRKB 0.42%) CEO at the start of the year, investors have been watching to see what he does with the conglomerate's war chest. Filings with Japanese regulators gave an early answer last quarter.

Berkshire disclosed that its stake in trading house Mitsubishi (MSBHF 1.14%) climbed to 11.1% as of April 30. Its stake in Sumitomo (SSUMY 3.31%) reached 10.3% as of May 12, up from 9.3%. And Marubeni (MARUY 0.35%) is on the list, too.

Berkshire's buying has pushed its holdings in both Sumitomo and Marubeni above 10%, cementing the conglomerate's position as the largest shareholder of both companies.

These are three of the five Japanese trading houses (Itochu and Mitsui are the other two) that Berkshire began buying in 2019 under Warren Buffett, who remains chairman. The original thesis has already paid off handsomely. So why does Berkshire keep adding? To me, the numbers make the case better than any story could.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

1. Mitsubishi Mitsubishi is Berkshire's largest Japanese position. The trading houses (Japan calls them sogo shosha) are conglomerates in their own right, each owning interests in a vast array of businesses in Japan and around the world.

At the end of 2025, Berkshire owned 10.8% of Mitsubishi, a stake that cost $4.2 billion and was worth $9.2 billion, according to Berkshire's annual report. The position also paid Berkshire $273 million in dividends last year, the largest payout of the five. And the April filing shows the conglomerate kept buying anyway.

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2. Marubeni Marubeni has been Berkshire's best performer of the group. The stake cost about $1.6 billion and had grown to about $4.5 billion by the end of 2025 -- nearly a tripling. It added another $105 million in dividends last year.

Berkshire owned 9.8% of Marubeni at year-end. The latest buying lifted that above 10%.

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Abel's newest dollars, in other words, went to Berkshire's biggest winner.

3. Sumitomo Sumitomo rounds out the trio. Berkshire's position cost $1.9 billion and stood at $4.0 billion at the close of 2025, and it paid $102 million in dividends last year. The May filing put Berkshire's ownership at 10.3%, up a full percentage point.

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Impressive gains Add it all up, and Berkshire's five trading house stakes cost $15.4 billion and were worth $35.4 billion at the end of 2025. The five companies paid Berkshire a combined $862 million in dividends last year. That works out to a yield of about 5.6% on Berkshire's original cost.

The trend is worth noting, too. A year earlier, the same five positions had cost $13.8 billion and were worth $23.5 billion. So in 2025, Berkshire put about $1.6 billion of new money in, and the market value of its stakes grew by nearly $12 billion. The gap between what Berkshire paid and what it owns keeps widening.

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The funding makes the math even better. Berkshire has borrowed in Japan an amount roughly equivalent to the yen it has invested, at an average interest cost of just 1.2%. Put another way, the dividends cover the borrowing costs several times over before counting a penny of share-price appreciation.

And the strategy is still very much in use. Berkshire issued another 272.3 billion yen of senior notes in April.

There's also room to keep going. Berkshire originally agreed to keep its ownership of each company below 10%, but Buffett wrote in his February 2025 shareholder letter that as Berkshire approached the limit, the five companies agreed to relax the ceiling moderately.

"I expect that Greg and his eventual successors will be holding this Japanese position for many decades," Buffett wrote in the same letter.

And in his first annual letter as CEO, Abel put the positions on equal footing with the company's flagship stock holdings. He wrote that Berkshire views its Japanese investments as "comparable to our major U.S. holdings in importance and long-term value creation opportunity."

For Berkshire shareholders, I think the buying is an encouraging early signal. Abel's first notable moves weren't a splashy acquisition or a chase after the market's artificial intelligence (AI) trade. They were more of what already works: profitable conglomerates bought at low prices, paying growing dividends, funded with cheap fixed-rate debt.

In the latest trading session, BellRing Brands (BRBR - Free Report) closed at $12.12, marking a +1.08% move from the previous day. The stock exceeded the S&P 500, which registered a loss of 1.01% for the day. Meanwhile, the Dow lost 0.77%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, lost 1.4%.

The stock of nutritional supplements company has risen by 26.74% in the past month, leading the Consumer Staples sector's gain of 1.62% and the S&P 500's gain of 0.32%.

The upcoming earnings release of BellRing Brands will be of great interest to investors. The company's earnings report is expected on August 4, 2026. It is anticipated that the company will report an EPS of $0.36, marking a 34.55% fall compared to the same quarter of the previous year. Meanwhile, the latest consensus estimate predicts the revenue to be $553.26 million, indicating a 1.05% increase compared to the same quarter of the previous year.

Looking at the full year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of $1.23 per share and revenue of $2.33 billion. These totals would mark changes of -43.32% and +0.7%, respectively, from last year.

Additionally, investors should keep an eye on any recent revisions to analyst forecasts for BellRing Brands. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest near-term business trends. Hence, positive alterations in estimates signify analyst optimism regarding the business and profitability.

Our research reveals that these estimate alterations are directly linked with the stock price performance in the near future. To take advantage of this, we've established the Zacks Rank, an exclusive model that considers these estimated changes and delivers an operational rating system.

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 last 30 days, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 0.2% lower. BellRing Brands is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

Looking at its valuation, BellRing Brands is holding a Forward P/E ratio of 9.79. This expresses a discount compared to the average Forward P/E of 13.22 of its industry.

Also, we should mention that BRBR has a PEG ratio of 5.9. The PEG ratio is similar to the widely-used P/E ratio, but this metric also takes the company's expected earnings growth rate into account. The average PEG ratio for the Food - Miscellaneous industry stood at 2.53 at the close of the market yesterday.

The Food - Miscellaneous industry is part of the Consumer Staples sector. With its current Zacks Industry Rank of 211, this industry ranks in the bottom 15% of all industries, numbering over 250.

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.

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

Ralph Lauren (RL - Free Report) ended the recent trading session at $380.45, demonstrating a -1.97% change from the preceding day's closing price. This change lagged the S&P 500's daily loss of 1.01%. Elsewhere, the Dow saw a downswing of 0.77%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq depreciated by 1.4%.

The stock of upscale clothing company has fallen by 6.03% in the past month, lagging the Consumer Discretionary sector's gain of 1.27% and the S&P 500's gain of 0.32%.

The upcoming earnings release of Ralph Lauren will be of great interest to investors. The company is expected to report EPS of $4.26, up 13% from the prior-year quarter. Meanwhile, the latest consensus estimate predicts the revenue to be $1.86 billion, indicating a 8.25% increase compared to the same quarter of the previous year.

For the annual period, the Zacks Consensus Estimates anticipate earnings of $18.33 per share and a revenue of $8.66 billion, signifying shifts of +10.49% and +6.68%, respectively, from the last year.

Any recent changes to analyst estimates for Ralph Lauren should also be noted by investors. These latest adjustments often mirror the shifting dynamics of short-term business patterns. Therefore, positive revisions in estimates convey analysts' confidence in the business performance and profit potential.

Our research suggests that these changes in estimates have a direct relationship with upcoming stock price performance. To benefit from this, we have developed the Zacks Rank, a proprietary model which takes these estimate changes into account and provides an actionable rating system.

The Zacks Rank system, stretching from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), has a noteworthy track record of outperforming, validated by third-party audits, with stocks rated #1 producing an average annual return of +25% since the year 1988. Over the past month, there's been no change in the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate. Ralph Lauren is holding a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold) right now.

Valuation is also important, so investors should note that Ralph Lauren has a Forward P/E ratio of 21.17 right now. This valuation marks a premium compared to its industry average Forward P/E of 16.56.

One should further note that RL currently holds a PEG ratio of 1.93. The PEG ratio bears resemblance to the frequently used P/E ratio, but this parameter also includes the company's expected earnings growth trajectory. The Textile - Apparel industry currently had an average PEG ratio of 2.31 as of yesterday's close.

The Textile - Apparel industry is part of the Consumer Discretionary sector. At present, this industry carries a Zacks Industry Rank of 187, placing it within the bottom 24% of over 250 industries.

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

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