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Key Takeaways American Express reports Q2 results on July 24, with estimates suggesting 7.8% EPS and 9.9% revenue growth.AXP's network volumes, cards-in-force and net interest income are expected to support quarterly growth.American Express has a positive Earnings ESP, though higher customer engagement costs may weigh on margins. American Express Company (AXP - Free Report) is set to report second-quarter 2026 results on July 24, 2026, before the opening bell. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the to-be-reported quarter’s earnings is currently pegged at $4.40 per share, and the same for revenues is pinned at $19.62 billion.

The second-quarter earnings estimate witnessed two upward revisions over the past 60 days against two downward movements. The bottom-line prediction indicates a year-over-year increase of 7.8%. The consensus estimate for quarterly revenues implies year-over-year growth of 9.9%.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

For the full-year 2026, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for AmEx’s revenues is pegged at $79.28 billion, implying a rise of 9.8% year over year. Meanwhile, the consensus mark for full-year EPS is pegged at $17.67, implying growth of 14.9% on a year-over-year basis.

AmExbeat the consensus estimate in three of the last four quarters and missed once, with the average surprise being 4%.

Q2 Earnings Whispers for AmExOur proven model predicts a likely earnings beat for the company this time around. The combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the odds of an earnings beat. That is precisely the case here.

AXP has an Earnings ESP of +0.61% and a Zacks Rank #3. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they’re reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

What is Shaping AmEx’s Q2 Results?AmEx is expected to see a rise in network volumes during the second quarter, likely attributable to the resilient consumer spending of its premium customer base, which is less impacted by economic volatilities. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for second-quarter total network volumes indicates 10.1% year-over-year growth from $472 billion.

Discount revenues, a key source of AmEx’s top line, are expected to have benefited from rising network volumes. The consensus mark for second-quarter Discount revenues indicates 7.7% year-over-year growth. Billed businesses in U.S. Consumer Services and Commercial Services are expected to witness growth of 11.8% and 3.5% year over year, respectively. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for pre-tax income from Commercial Services indicates a 7.5% jump from a year ago.

Cards-in-force are expected to increase in the quarter on the back of expanding product offerings and stronger market penetration.The consensus projection for second-quarter total cards-in-force indicates 4.7% year-over-year growth. The estimate for Average fee per card also implies a 14.3% year-over-year increase.

AmEx’s interest income, another major revenue contributor, is expected to rise on higher loan receivables. The estimate for AXP’s net interest income implies an upside of 11.3% from the year-ago reported figure.

The above factors are expected to support year-over-year growth in the second quarter and set the stage for a potential earnings beat. However, higher customer engagement and operating costs could limit the upside. Higher variable customer engagement costs resulting from increased spending by Card Members and greater use of travel and lifestyle benefits are likely to have partially impacted margin growth.

Other Stocks That Warrant a LookHere are some other companies worth considering from the broader Finance space, as our model shows that these, too, have the right combination of elements to beat on earnings this time around:

Credicorp Ltd. (BAP - Free Report) has an Earnings ESP of +2.31% and a Zacks Rank #2 at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Credicorp’s bottom line for the to-be-reported quarter is pegged at $7.20 per share, which indicates 15.4% year-over-year growth. The consensus estimate for BAP’s revenues is pegged at $1.72 billion, a 9.3% increase from a year ago.

Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. (BAM - Free Report) has an Earnings ESP of +1.60% and a Zacks Rank of 3 at present.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Brookfield Asset Management’s bottom line for the to-be-reported quarter is pegged at 44 cents per share, which indicates 15.8% year-over-year growth. The consensus estimate for BAM’s revenues is pegged at $1.49 billion, a 15.6% increase from a year ago.

Virtu Financial, Inc. (VIRT - Free Report) has an Earnings ESP of +3.25% and a Zacks Rank of 3 at present.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Virtu Financial’s bottom line for the to-be-reported quarter is pegged at $1.67 per share, suggesting growth of 9.2% from a year ago. The consensus estimate for VIRT’s revenues is pegged at $639.48 million, a 12.6% year-over-year jump.

Key Takeaways NEM will report Q2'26 results July 23, with earnings seen up 49% and revenue up 16.4% year over year.NEM expects lower Q2 gold output and higher unit cost from mine sequencing, inflation and sustaining capital.NEM expects lower 2026 output at Penasquito, Cadia, Nevada Gold Mines and Pueblo Viejo. Newmont Corporation (NEM - Free Report) is slated to report second-quarter 2026 results after the closing bell on July 23. The mining giant is expected to have benefited from significantly higher realized gold prices in the second quarter compared with the year-ago period. However, the pricing tailwind is likely to have been weaker than in the first quarter. Gold prices retreated from the record highs reached earlier in the year as easing trade tensions, profit-taking after a solid rally and a stronger U.S. dollar reduced safe-haven demand. 

NEM’s second-quarter performance is expected to have been weighed down by lower production across certain operations, planned mine sequencing and persistent cost inflation. Higher labor, energy and consumable costs are also likely to have pressured margins. Although stronger copper and silver prices may have provided some support, these gains are expected to have been insufficient to fully offset the impact of lower output and elevated operating expenses. 

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for second-quarter earnings was revised downward in the past 90 days. The consensus estimate for earnings is pegged at $2.07 per share, suggesting a 44.8% year-over-year rise. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for second-quarter revenues currently stands at $6.19 billion, indicating a roughly 16.4% increase from the year-ago quarter.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

NEM beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings in each of the last four quarters. It has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 33.6%, on average. 

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Q2 Earnings Whispers for NEMOur proven model doesn’t predict an earnings beat for NEM this time around. The combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the chances of an earnings beat. That is just not the case here. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they’re reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

NEM has an Earnings ESP of -10.65% and a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). 

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. 

Factors Shaping NEM’s Q2 ResultsNEM saw lower gold production for the first quarter, partly linked to its strategic divestment of non-core assets. NEM reported a roughly 16% year-over-year and 10% sequential decline in attributable gold production to 1.3 million ounces. Newmont expects second-quarter 2026 production to be below the first-quarter level. The company had produced 1.5 million attributable gold ounces in the first quarter of 2025. 

Our estimate for attributable gold production stands at 1.23 million ounces for the second quarter, which indicates a 10.9% year-over-year decline. 

The company anticipates gold production at about 5.26 million ounces for 2026, indicating a year-over-year decline from 5.89 million ounces in 2025. NEM expects lower production from Penasquito and Cadia in 2026 due to the site transitions. It also sees lower-than-expected production from Nevada Gold Mines and Pueblo Viejo. These will be partly offset by contributions from the newly commissioned Ahafo North mine. 

Newmont is expected to have benefited from higher realized gold prices on a year-over-year basis in the to-be-reported quarter, but the pricing tailwind is likely to have been less pronounced than in the first quarter of 2026. Gold prices have retreated from the record highs reached earlier in the year amid easing geopolitical and trade tensions, a firmer U.S. dollar and profit-taking following a sharp rally, reducing safe-haven demand. Consequently, the company's average realized gold price is expected to have been lower than the record $4,900 per ounce reported in the first quarter, limiting the upside from higher gold prices in the second quarter. 

Our estimate of the average realized gold price for the second quarter is $4,774 per ounce, indicating a 2.5% sequential decline. 

Lower production is expected to lead to higher unit costs in 2026. NEM expects all-in-sustaining costs (AISC) — a critical cost metric for miners — to be $1,680 per ounce on a by-product basis, a notable increase from $1,358 per ounce in 2025. The expected increase is due to lower sales volumes resulting from planned mine sequencing, higher royalties and production taxes, deferral of sustaining capital from 2025 to 2026, and inventory changes.  

Newmont also sees a significant sequential increase in unit costs in the second quarter, partly due to increased sustaining capital spending, higher costs associated with sales at Boddington, Tanami, Lihir and Penasquito and increased oil prices. The production decline and higher costs could undercut the profitability goals. 

Newmont Stock’s Price Performance and ValuationNewmont’s shares have surged 44.5% in the past year, outperforming the Zacks Mining – Gold industry’s 26.2% increase and the S&P 500’s rise of 21.1%. Its gold mining peers, Barrick Mining Corporation (B - Free Report) , Agnico Eagle Mines Limited (AEM - Free Report) and Kinross Gold Corporation (KGC - Free Report) have surged 60.5%, 6% and 37.4%, respectively, over the same period. 

Price Performance of NEM vs. Industry, S&P 500, KGC, AEM & BImage Source: Zacks Investment Research

From a valuation standpoint, Newmont is currently trading at a forward 12-month earnings multiple of 9.09, higher than the industry. NEM is trading at a premium to Barrick and Kinross Gold and at a discount to Agnico Eagle. Newmont and Kinross Gold have a Value Score of B, Barrick has a Value Score of A, while Agnico Eagle currently has a Value Score of C. 

Valuation of NEM vs. Industry, KGC, AEM & BImage Source: Zacks Investment Research

Investment Thesis for NEM StockNewmont faces near-term headwinds from anticipated lower gold production, mine transitions and rising costs, which are expected to have weighed on earnings and margins in the second quarter of 2026. Production is projected to have declined due to weaker output at key operations, while higher all-in sustaining costs and softer realized gold prices sequentially could pressure profitability. Although contributions from the Ahafo North mine and elevated year-over-year gold prices might have provided some support, they are unlikely to have fully offset these challenges. These factors are expected to have limited earnings growth and could keep pressure on the stock in the near term. 

Final Thoughts: Sell NEM SharesNewmont's near-term outlook remains challenging as lower gold production, softer realized gold prices and significantly higher all-in sustaining costs are expected to weigh on earnings and margin performance. Production headwinds stemming from mine transitions, asset divestments and weaker output at several key operations are likely to persist through 2026, limiting volume growth. At the same time, easing gold prices reduce the benefit of the favorable pricing environment seen earlier this year, while rising operating and sustaining capital costs are expected to pressure profitability.  

With weakening fundamentals and a relatively expensive valuation, the stock offers a less compelling risk-reward profile, and investors may be better served by considering more attractively valued alternatives in the gold mining space. 

HomeStock IdeasLong IdeasTech 

SummaryTSMC and ASML confirmed AI memory demand remains exceptionally strong, while fully booked EUV capacity limits industry supply growth through 2028.Japan and the U.S. committed billions toward Micron Technology, Inc.'s manufacturing expansion, strengthening long-term capacity, supply-chain resilience, and geopolitical positioning.General Motors and Ford signed long-term supply agreements, diversifying Micron beyond hyperscalers with stable automotive AI memory demand.Micron trades at only 11.6x forward earnings despite consensus forecasting EPS growth from $73.39 to $150.91 in FY2027.The main risks are HBM4 technology execution and antitrust litigation, while investor sentiment has become increasingly polarized after the recent selloff. petrovv/iStock via Getty Images

Investment Thesis Despite the correction in Micron Technology, Inc.'s (MU) stock price, TSMC (TSM) and ASML Holding (ASML) have reiterated that HBM demand remains exceptionally strong, whereas EUV shortages turn into

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Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have a beneficial long position in the shares of MU either through stock ownership, options, or other derivatives. 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.

AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:AMC) on Monday reported better-than-expected second-quarter results.

Adjusted EPS of 14 cents surpassed the analyst expectations for a loss of six cents per share. The largest cinema chain operator’s revenue rose 14.2% year over year (Y/Y) to $1.60 billion, exceeding estimates of $1.47 billion.

AMC plans to expand its premium large format (PLF) and extra-large format (XLF) footprint by adding 100–250 auditoriums over the next 2–4 years, primarily funded through third-party capital.

AMC shares fell 6.9% to trade at $2.28 on Tuesday.

These analysts made changes to their price targets on AMC following earnings announcement.

Wedbush analyst Alicia Reese maintained AMC with an Outperform rating and raised the price target from $3 to $4. Benchmark analyst Mike Hickey maintained the stock with a Buy and raised the price target from $2.5 to $3. Considering buying AMC stock? Here’s what analysts think:

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MEXC adds Bittensor TAO staking for its global user baseThe integration with validator Yuma gives millions of MEXC users access to Bittensor, an AI-focused blockchain whose ecosystem now spans 128 specialized subnets.

Cryptocurrency exchange MEXC has launched staking support for Bittensor’s native TAO token, allowing users to earn rewards by helping secure one of the largest decentralized artificial intelligence networks.

Bittensor validator Yuma announced Tuesday that MEXC has integrated its validator infrastructure to support TAO staking for the exchange’s reported 40 million users. Yuma participates in Bittensor’s consensus mechanism by evaluating the performance of network subnets — specialized AI applications that perform specific machine learning tasks — and assigning weights that help determine how staking rewards are distributed.

The companies said the integration is intended to expand access to the Bittensor ecosystem and increase participation in the network.

Bittensor is a decentralized network that coordinates the development of AI models and services through subnets, which compete for token rewards based on their performance and usefulness to the network. TAO holders can stake tokens to validators, who allocate stake across subnets and earn rewards based on those allocations. 

The Bittensor ecosystem currently consists of 128 subnets that specialize in tasks such as AI inference, model training, coding assistants and financial modeling. The ecosystem has expanded as interest in decentralized AI grows, with advocates arguing that open networks such as Bittensor are less susceptible to government or corporate restrictions than proprietary AI models. That argument gained renewed attention after the US Commerce Department restricted public access to certain Anthropic models due to national security and export control concerns.

TAO was trading at around $199 at the time of writing, giving it a market capitalization of roughly $1.916 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

Increased Middle East capability primed to meet future demands of widebody platforms

, /PRNewswire/ -- Farnborough International Airshow – Collins Aerospace, an RTX (NYSE: RTX) business, and Etihad Airways Engineering LLC (Etihad Engineering) announced a joint venture agreement at the Farnborough International Airshow to provide maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The JV will provide nacelle and thrust reverser maintenance solutions, along with asset support services, for Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 widebody fleets across regional and international carriers.

As part of the agreement, Collins will relocate existing UAE nacelle operations to Etihad Engineering's 550,000-square-meter aviation maintenance centre of excellence near Zayed International Airport, doubling Collins' current nacelle MRO footprint in the Middle East. The 3,250-square-meter facility is expected to be operational in the first quarter of 2027.

"By co-locating with Etihad Engineering's rapidly expanding heavy maintenance facility, Collins can deliver enhanced service levels and technical expertise to meet the demand of the Middle East region's fast growing aviation market," said PJ Titone, vice president and general manager of Advanced Structures for Collins Aerospace. "This joint venture expands our global MRO footprint and supports the rising number of commercial aircraft equipped with Collins nacelles helping carriers across the region reduce costs and improve turnaround times."

Etihad Engineering, a part of Abu Dhabi Aviation (ADA) group of companies, is one of the world's leading aircraft MRO service providers, offering extensive aircraft maintenance and engineering solutions across a range of airframe maintenance and component repair services. The establishment of the JV will complement and expand Etihad Engineering's existing aircraft maintenance solutions and provide airline customers in the region and from around the world with enhanced nacelle MRO services.

Mahmood Al Hameli, Group CEO of Abu Dhabi Aviation (ADA), said: "This new capability aligns with our Group's long-term commitment to organic growth through capability enhancement and the development of local expertise. This not only broadens our service offerings but also enhances resilience and provides better responsiveness to our customers."

"We offer our global customer base a wide range of industry-leading aircraft maintenance and engineering services in Abu Dhabi as a one-stop MRO solutions partner. The creation of this JV with Collins Aerospace strengthens our world-class value proposition by adding high-quality nacelle maintenance and thrust reverser MRO services to our comprehensive existing portfolio for our customers from all over the world," said Daniel Hoffmann, CEO of Etihad Engineering.

The JV will operate as part of Collins' aerostructures aftermarket network supported by a global team.

About Collins Aerospace
Collins Aerospace, an RTX business, provides advanced aerospace and defense solutions across avionics, aircraft interiors, aerostructures and engine components, mission systems, and power and control systems. Our global employees are dedicated to delivering innovative technologies to enhance aircraft performance, passenger comfort, operational safety and reliability. 

About RTX
With more than 180,000 global employees, we push the limits of technology and science to redefine how we connect and protect our world. With industry-leading capabilities, we advance aviation, engineer integrated defense systems for operational success, and develop next-generation technology solutions and manufacturing to help global customers address their most critical challenges. The company, with 2025 sales of more than $88 billion, is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.

About Etihad Engineering
Etihad Engineering is one of the world's leading commercial aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services providers and the largest in the Middle East. The company offers comprehensive aircraft maintenance and engineering services, including design, advanced composite repair, cabin refurbishment and component services, as well as technical training, from its state-of-the-art 550,000 sqm facility located in Abu Dhabi, adjacent to Zayed International Airport. The 2000-strong Etihad Engineering team with professionals from more than 50 nations has successfully completed aircraft maintenance projects over the years for hundreds of satisfied customers from all over the world. For more information, please visit: www.etihadengineering.com and follow the latest company updates on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/etihad-engineering 

For questions or to schedule an interview, please contact [email protected] and Farrukh Naeem for Etihad Engineering at [email protected].

SOURCE RTX

AGNC Investment Corp. (AGNC) Q2 2026 Earnings Call July 21, 2026 8:30 AM EDT

Company Participants

Katherine Turlington - Investor Relations Analyst
Peter Federico - President, CEO & Director and Chief Investment Officer
Bernice Bell - Executive VP & CFO

Conference Call Participants

Douglas Harter - BTIG, LLC, Research Division
Crispin Love - Piper Sandler & Co., Research Division
Ameeta Lobo Nelson - UBS Investment Bank, Research Division
Jason Weaver - JonesTrading Institutional Services, LLC, Research Division
Bose George - Keefe, Bruyette, & Woods, Inc., Research Division
Trevor Cranston - Citizens JMP Securities, LLC, Research Division
Hong Zhang - JPMorgan Chase & Co, Research Division
Harsh Hemnani - Green Street Advisors, LLC, Research Division

Presentation

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the AGNC Investment Corp. Second Quarter 2026 Shareholder Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Katie Turlington in Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Katherine Turlington
Investor Relations Analyst

Thank you all for joining AGNC Investment Corp.'s Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. Before we begin, I'd like to review the safe harbor statement. This conference call and corresponding slide presentation contains statements that, to the extent they are not recitations of historical facts, constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All such forward-looking statements are intended to be subject to the safe harbor protection provided by the reform act. Actual outcomes and results could differ materially from those forecast due to the impact of many factors beyond the control of AGNC.

All forward-looking statements included in this presentation are made only as of the date of this presentation and are subject to change without notice. Certain factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements are included in AGNC's periodic

Ares Capital (ARCC +0.63%) currently yields just over 10%. That's about 10 times higher than the S&P 500.

At that rate, investing $5,000 into the business development company's (BDC) stock would generate a little more than $500 a year in passive income. That's, of course, if Ares Capital can maintain its current dividend rate. Here's a look at the sustainability of its high-yielding payout.

Image source: Getty Images.

Getting tighter, but not a concern yet Ares Capital has an excellent dividend track record. The BDC has paid a stable or growing regular dividend for over 16 consecutive years. That's impressive in the BDC space, as many of its peers have had to cut their payouts over the years due to falling earnings.

There's some concern about the sustainability of Ares Capital's dividend, given the recent decline in its core earnings. The BDC reported $0.47 per share of core earnings in the first quarter, down from $0.50 per share in the fourth quarter and year-ago period. As a result, core earnings fell short of the $0.48-per-share quarterly dividend.

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However, that doesn't mean a payout cut is forthcoming. Ares Capital also reported $0.15 per share of realized gains in the first quarter. Add that to core earnings, and its combined income was more than enough to cover the payout. Further, the BDC has built up a sizable cushion of spillover income from excess earnings carried over from last year ($1.38 per share). Additionally, the company highlighted several other factors on its first-quarter call that point to continued dividend stability and growth. It has modest leverage, the interest rate environment is stabilizing, and its portfolio's current credit performance aligns with its historical track record.

Given all these factors, a $5,000 investment in Ares Capital should generate $500 in dividend income over the next year. While it's a higher-risk dividend stock that investors will need to monitor more closely, it has the potential to continue paying at or above its current annual dividend rate for the foreseeable future.

Matt DiLallo has positions in Ares Capital. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Ares Capital. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Key Takeaways SLB is scheduled to report second-quarter 2026 results on July 24 before the opening bell.SLB's second-quarter revenues are projected to increase 1.9% year over year to $8.71 billion.Higher year-over-year oil prices likely supported drilling activity during the June-end quarter. SLB (SLB - Free Report) is set to report second-quarter 2026 results on July 24, 2026, before the opening bell.

In the last reported quarter, its adjusted earnings of 52 cents per share topped the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 51 cents, primarily driven by a revenue increase in the Digital segment and contributions from the ChampionX acquisition. However, operational disruptions due to the Middle East conflict affected the Reservoir Performance and the Well Construction segments.

The company beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings in each of the trailing four quarters, delivering an average surprise of 3.32%. This is depicted in the graph below:

Estimate Trend for SLBThe Zacks Consensus Estimate for second-quarter earnings per share of 51 cents has seen downward revisions in the past seven days. The estimated figure indicates a 31.1% decline from the prior-year reported figure.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenues is pegged at $8.71 billion, indicating an increase of 1.9% from the year-ago recorded figure.

Factors to Consider for SLB's Q2 ResultsSLB is a prominent name in the oilfield services industry, providing a comprehensive range of services to the oil and gas industry. As an oilfield services provider, SLB’s business model is highly exposed to commodity price volatility.

According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (“EIA”), the Cushing, OK, WTI Spot Price per barrel averaged $100.32, $102.13 and $84.81 in April, May and June, respectively, significantly higher than the $63.54, $62.17 and $68.17 recorded in the same period of 2025. This significant year-over-year improvement in oil prices is likely to have increased the pace of drilling activity, creating potential tailwinds for SLB's performance in the June-end quarter.

Earnings Whispers for SLBOur proven model does not conclusively predict an earnings beat for SLB this time around. The combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the chances of an earnings beat. However, that is not the case here, as you will see below.

Earnings ESP of SLB: SLB has an Earnings ESP of -1.96%. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they are reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

SLB'S Zacks Rank: SLB currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

Stocks to ConsiderHere are some stocks that you may want to consider, as these have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this reporting cycle.

NOV Inc. (NOV - Free Report) has an Earnings ESP of +19.69% and currently has a Zacks Rank of 2. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

NOV is scheduled to release second-quarter 2026 earnings on July 28, 2026. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for NOV’s earnings is pegged at 16 cents per share, indicating a 44.8% decline from the prior-year reported figure.

Cactus, Inc. (WHD - Free Report) has an Earnings ESP of +7.04% and carries a Zacks Rank of 2 at present. Cactus is scheduled to release second-quarter 2026 earnings on July 29.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for WHD’s earnings is pegged at 71 cents per share, suggesting a 7.6% improvement from the prior-year reported figure.

HF Sinclair Corporation (DINO - Free Report) has an Earnings ESP of +11.69% and a Zacks Rank of 2. HF Sinclair is scheduled to release second-quarter 2026 earnings on July 28.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for DINO’s earnings is pegged at $3.93 per share, suggesting a 131.2% increase from the prior-year reported figure.

The market expects Rithm (RITM - Free Report) to deliver a year-over-year decline in earnings on higher revenues when it reports results for the quarter ended June 2026. This widely-known consensus outlook is important in assessing the company's earnings picture, but a powerful factor that might influence its near-term stock price is how the actual results compare to these estimates.

The stock might move higher if these key numbers top expectations in the upcoming earnings report, which is expected to be released on July 28. On the other hand, if they miss, the stock may move lower.

While management's discussion of business conditions on the earnings call will mostly determine the sustainability of the immediate price change and future earnings expectations, it's worth having a handicapping insight into the odds of a positive EPS surprise.

Zacks Consensus EstimateThis real estate investment trust is expected to post quarterly earnings of $0.50 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of -7.4%.

Revenues are expected to be $1.46 billion, up 19.9% from the year-ago quarter.

Estimate Revisions TrendThe consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has been revised 2.38% lower over the last 30 days to the current level. This is essentially a reflection of how the covering analysts have collectively reassessed their initial estimates over this period.

Investors should keep in mind that an aggregate change may not always reflect the direction of estimate revisions by each of the covering analysts.

Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

Earnings WhisperEstimate revisions ahead of a company's earnings release offer clues to the business conditions for the period whose results are coming out. Our proprietary surprise prediction model -- the Zacks Earnings ESP (Expected Surprise Prediction) -- has this insight at its core.

The Zacks Earnings ESP compares the Most Accurate Estimate to the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter; the Most Accurate Estimate is a more recent version of the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate. The idea here is that analysts revising their estimates right before an earnings release have the latest information, which could potentially be more accurate than what they and others contributing to the consensus had predicted earlier.

Thus, a positive or negative Earnings ESP reading theoretically indicates the likely deviation of the actual earnings from the consensus estimate. However, the model's predictive power is significant for positive ESP readings only.

A positive Earnings ESP is a strong predictor of an earnings beat, particularly when combined with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold). Our research shows that stocks with this combination produce a positive surprise nearly 70% of the time, and a solid Zacks Rank actually increases the predictive power of Earnings ESP.

Please note that a negative Earnings ESP reading is not indicative of an earnings miss. Our research shows that it is difficult to predict an earnings beat with any degree of confidence for stocks with negative Earnings ESP readings and/or Zacks Rank of 4 (Sell) or 5 (Strong Sell).

How Have the Numbers Shaped Up for Rithm?For Rithm, the Most Accurate Estimate is lower than the Zacks Consensus Estimate, suggesting that analysts have recently become bearish on the company's earnings prospects. This has resulted in an Earnings ESP of -2.00%.

On the other hand, the stock currently carries a Zacks Rank of #4.

So, this combination makes it difficult to conclusively predict that Rithm will beat the consensus EPS estimate.

Does Earnings Surprise History Hold Any Clue?Analysts often consider to what extent a company has been able to match consensus estimates in the past while calculating their estimates for its future earnings. So, it's worth taking a look at the surprise history for gauging its influence on the upcoming number.

For the last reported quarter, it was expected that Rithm would post earnings of $0.53 per share when it actually produced earnings of $0.51, delivering a surprise of -3.77%.

Over the last four quarters, the company has beaten consensus EPS estimates two times.

Bottom LineAn earnings beat or miss may not be the sole basis for a stock moving higher or lower. Many stocks end up losing ground despite an earnings beat due to other factors that disappoint investors. Similarly, unforeseen catalysts help a number of stocks gain despite an earnings miss.

That said, betting on stocks that are expected to beat earnings expectations does increase the odds of success. This is why it's worth checking a company's Earnings ESP and Zacks Rank ahead of its quarterly release. Make sure to utilize our Earnings ESP Filter to uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they've reported.

Rithm doesn't appear a compelling earnings-beat candidate. However, investors should pay attention to other factors too for betting on this stock or staying away from it ahead of its earnings release.

Expected Results of an Industry PlayerAnother stock from the Zacks Financial - Miscellaneous Services industry, ChoiceOne Financial Services, Inc. (COFS - Free Report) , is soon expected to post earnings of $0.88 per share for the quarter ended June 2026. This estimate indicates a year-over-year change of -3.3%. Revenues for the quarter are expected to be $43.1 million, up 0.6% from the year-ago quarter.

The consensus EPS estimate for ChoiceOne Financial Services has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. However, a higher Most Accurate Estimate has resulted in an Earnings ESP of +2.27%.

When combined with a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold), this Earnings ESP indicates that ChoiceOne Financial Services will most likely beat the consensus EPS estimate. The company beat consensus EPS estimates in each of the trailing four quarters.

Stay on top of upcoming earnings announcements with the Zacks Earnings Calendar.

D.R. Horton, Inc. (DHI) Q3 2026 Earnings Call July 21, 2026 8:30 AM EDT

Company Participants

Jessica Hansen - Senior VP of Communications & People and Head of Investor Relations
Paul Romanowski - President, CEO & Director
Michael Murray - Executive VP & COO
Bill Wheat - Executive VP & CFO

Conference Call Participants

John Lovallo - UBS Investment Bank, Research Division
Stephen Kim - Evercore ISI Institutional Equities, Research Division
Alan Ratner - Zelman & Associates LLC
Matthew Bouley - Barclays Bank PLC, Research Division
Eric Bosshard - Cleveland Research Company LLC
Richard Reid - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division
Ryan Gilbert - BTIG, LLC, Research Division
Anthony Pettinari - Citigroup Inc., Research Division
Rafe Jadrosich - BofA Securities, Research Division
Trevor Allinson - Wolfe Research, LLC
Susan Maklari - Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Research Division
Michael Dahl - RBC Capital Markets, Research Division
Buck Horne - Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division
Kenneth Zener - Seaport Research Partners
Jade Rahmani - Keefe, Bruyette, & Woods, Inc., Research Division
Jay McCanless - Citizens JMP Securities, LLC, Research Division
Alex Barrón - Housing Research Center, LLC

Presentation

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call for D.R. Horton, America's Builder. [Operator Instructions] Please note this conference is being recorded.

I will now turn the call over to Jessica Hansen, Senior Vice President of Communications for D.R. Horton.

Jessica Hansen
Senior VP of Communications & People and Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Paul, and good morning. Welcome to our call to discuss our financial results for the third quarter of fiscal 2026.

Before we get started, today's call includes forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Although D.R. Horton believes any such statements are based on reasonable assumptions, there is no assurance that actual outcomes will not be materially different. All forward-looking statements are based upon information available to

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Zions Bancorp (NASDAQ:ZION) reported upbeat earnings for the second quarter on Monday.

The company posted quarterly earnings of $3.05 per share which beat the analyst consensus estimate of $1.71 per share. The company reported quarterly sales of $1.137 billion which beat the analyst consensus estimate of $901.498 million.

Zions Bancorp shares fell 3.9% to trade at $69.10 on Tuesday.

These analysts made changes to their price targets on Zions Bancorp following earnings announcement.

Baird analyst David George maintained the stock with a Neutral and raised the price target from $68 to $75. TD Cowen analyst Janet Lee maintained the stock with a Hold and raised the price target from $71 to $73. Considering buying ZION stock? Here’s what analysts think:

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Analysts on Wall Street project that Molina (MOH - Free Report) will announce quarterly earnings of $1.37 per share in its forthcoming report, representing a decline of 75% year over year. Revenues are projected to reach $10.88 billion, declining 4.8% from the same quarter last year.

The consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. This reflects how the analysts covering the stock have collectively reevaluated their initial estimates during this timeframe.

Prior to a company's earnings release, it is of utmost importance to factor in any revisions made to the earnings projections. These revisions serve as a critical gauge for predicting potential investor behaviors with respect to the stock. Empirical studies consistently reveal a strong link between trends in earnings estimate revisions and the short-term price performance of a stock.

While investors typically rely on consensus earnings and revenue estimates to gauge how the business may have fared during the quarter, examining analysts' projections for some of the company's key metrics often helps gain a deeper insight.

In light of this perspective, let's dive into the average estimates of certain Molina metrics that are commonly tracked and forecasted by Wall Street analysts.

The consensus among analysts is that 'Revenue- Premium revenue- Marketplace' will reach $643.41 million. The estimate indicates a change of -46.4% from the prior-year quarter.

Based on the collective assessment of analysts, 'Revenue- Premium tax revenue' should arrive at $437.04 million. The estimate suggests a change of +1.4% year over year.

Analysts predict that the 'Revenue- Premium revenue- Medicaid' will reach $8.16 billion. The estimate indicates a year-over-year change of +1.6%.

According to the collective judgment of analysts, 'Revenue- Premium revenue- Medicare' should come in at $1.63 billion. The estimate indicates a change of +1.2% from the prior-year quarter.

The average prediction of analysts places 'MCR - Medicaid' at 92.9%. Compared to the present estimate, the company reported 91.3% in the same quarter last year.

The collective assessment of analysts points to an estimated 'MCR - Medicare' of 93.7%. Compared to the present estimate, the company reported 90.0% in the same quarter last year.

Analysts expect 'MCR - Marketplace' to come in at 84.9%. Compared to the current estimate, the company reported 85.4% in the same quarter of the previous year.

The consensus estimate for 'Ending Membership by Program - Total' stands at 5.00 million. The estimate is in contrast to the year-ago figure of 5.75 million.

It is projected by analysts that the 'Ending Membership by Program - Medicaid' will reach 4.48 million. Compared to the current estimate, the company reported 4.77 million in the same quarter of the previous year.

Analysts' assessment points toward 'Ending Membership by Program - Medicare' reaching 230.66 thousand. The estimate compares to the year-ago value of 267.00 thousand.

Analysts forecast 'Ending Membership by Program - Marketplaces' to reach 285.05 thousand. The estimate is in contrast to the year-ago figure of 690.00 thousand.

The combined assessment of analysts suggests that 'MCR - Total' will likely reach 92.5%. Compared to the present estimate, the company reported 90.4% in the same quarter last year.

View all Key Company Metrics for Molina here>>>

Molina shares have witnessed a change of +16.4% in the past month, in contrast to the Zacks S&P 500 composite's -0.6% move. With a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), MOH is expected closely follow the overall market performance in the near term. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stocks here >>>> .

Wall Street expects a year-over-year decline in earnings on higher revenues when CMS Energy (CMS - Free Report) reports results for the quarter ended June 2026. While this widely-known consensus outlook is important in gauging the company's earnings picture, a powerful factor that could impact its near-term stock price is how the actual results compare to these estimates.

The stock might move higher if these key numbers top expectations in the upcoming earnings report, which is expected to be released on July 28. On the other hand, if they miss, the stock may move lower.

While management's discussion of business conditions on the earnings call will mostly determine the sustainability of the immediate price change and future earnings expectations, it's worth having a handicapping insight into the odds of a positive EPS surprise.

Zacks Consensus EstimateThis energy company is expected to post quarterly earnings of $0.63 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of -11.3%.

Revenues are expected to be $1.95 billion, up 6.2% from the year-ago quarter.

Estimate Revisions TrendThe consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has been revised 6.1% higher over the last 30 days to the current level. This is essentially a reflection of how the covering analysts have collectively reassessed their initial estimates over this period.

Investors should keep in mind that the direction of estimate revisions by each of the covering analysts may not always get reflected in the aggregate change.

Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

Earnings WhisperEstimate revisions ahead of a company's earnings release offer clues to the business conditions for the period whose results are coming out. This insight is at the core of our proprietary surprise prediction model -- the Zacks Earnings ESP (Expected Surprise Prediction).

The Zacks Earnings ESP compares the Most Accurate Estimate to the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter; the Most Accurate Estimate is a more recent version of the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate. The idea here is that analysts revising their estimates right before an earnings release have the latest information, which could potentially be more accurate than what they and others contributing to the consensus had predicted earlier.

Thus, a positive or negative Earnings ESP reading theoretically indicates the likely deviation of the actual earnings from the consensus estimate. However, the model's predictive power is significant for positive ESP readings only.

A positive Earnings ESP is a strong predictor of an earnings beat, particularly when combined with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold). Our research shows that stocks with this combination produce a positive surprise nearly 70% of the time, and a solid Zacks Rank actually increases the predictive power of Earnings ESP.

Please note that a negative Earnings ESP reading is not indicative of an earnings miss. Our research shows that it is difficult to predict an earnings beat with any degree of confidence for stocks with negative Earnings ESP readings and/or Zacks Rank of 4 (Sell) or 5 (Strong Sell).

How Have the Numbers Shaped Up for CMS Energy?For CMS Energy, the Most Accurate Estimate is lower than the Zacks Consensus Estimate, suggesting that analysts have recently become bearish on the company's earnings prospects. This has resulted in an Earnings ESP of -10.40%.

On the other hand, the stock currently carries a Zacks Rank of #3.

So, this combination makes it difficult to conclusively predict that CMS Energy will beat the consensus EPS estimate.

Does Earnings Surprise History Hold Any Clue?Analysts often consider to what extent a company has been able to match consensus estimates in the past while calculating their estimates for its future earnings. So, it's worth taking a look at the surprise history for gauging its influence on the upcoming number.

For the last reported quarter, it was expected that CMS Energy would post earnings of $1.11 per share when it actually produced earnings of $1.13, delivering a surprise of +1.80%.

Over the last four quarters, the company has beaten consensus EPS estimates four times.

Bottom LineAn earnings beat or miss may not be the sole basis for a stock moving higher or lower. Many stocks end up losing ground despite an earnings beat due to other factors that disappoint investors. Similarly, unforeseen catalysts help a number of stocks gain despite an earnings miss.

That said, betting on stocks that are expected to beat earnings expectations does increase the odds of success. This is why it's worth checking a company's Earnings ESP and Zacks Rank ahead of its quarterly release. Make sure to utilize our Earnings ESP Filter to uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they've reported.

CMS Energy doesn't appear a compelling earnings-beat candidate. However, investors should pay attention to other factors too for betting on this stock or staying away from it ahead of its earnings release.

Expected Results of an Industry PlayerNextEra Energy (NEE - Free Report) , another stock in the Zacks Utility - Electric Power industry, is expected to report earnings per share of $1.08 for the quarter ended June 2026. This estimate points to a year-over-year change of +2.9%. Revenues for the quarter are expected to be $7.97 billion, up 18.9% from the year-ago quarter.

The consensus EPS estimate for NextEra has been revised 5% higher over the last 30 days to the current level. However, a lower Most Accurate Estimate has resulted in an Earnings ESP of -0.47%.

This Earnings ESP, combined with its Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), makes it difficult to conclusively predict that NextEra will beat the consensus EPS estimate. The company beat consensus EPS estimates in each of the trailing four quarters.

Stay on top of upcoming earnings announcements with the Zacks Earnings Calendar.

Key Highlights PUMP has surged more than 30% over the last seven days, currently trading around $0.001983 Trading volume exploded by over 500%, exceeding $164 million in daily activity Crypto influencer Ansem revealed a $1.5 million investment in PUMP, triggering a buying wave The platform has deployed approximately $410 million toward token buybacks, eliminating over 151 billion PUMP tokens Crypto analyst BATMAN identified renewed meme coin momentum as a critical catalyst for platform growth The PUMP token from Pump.fun has experienced remarkable momentum recently. Over the past seven days, the price has advanced more than 30%, with single-day gains reaching approximately 18%. At press time, PUMP was changing hands near $0.001983, with its market capitalization hovering around $779.88 million.

Pump.Fun (PUMP) Price Trading volume data reinforces this bullish narrative. Daily volume spiked more than 512%, climbing to $164 million within a 24-hour period. This dramatic increase suggests substantial buying interest rather than thin-market volatility.

A major catalyst behind this price action was crypto influencer Ansem’s public disclosure of his $1.5 million PUMP token acquisition. According to CoinGecko, the token’s value jumped over 23% following Ansem’s published investment rationale. Previously, analyst Kaff had suggested that PUMP’s fundamental metrics alone — including approximately $1–2 million in daily revenue and a price-to-earnings ratio around 1 — were insufficient to drive significant market movement independently.

ANSEM DIDN’T RANDOMLY WAKE UP BULLISH ON $PUMP

WATCH HOW THE ENTIRE INFLUENCER CAMPAIGN WAS BUILT IN REVERSE

June 16:

Ansem creates his first https://t.co/cWm0VDS47g profile and links his identity directly to a wallet

he immediately says he is “not endorsing any microcaps”… https://t.co/fmMhWoqYRw

— Jam (@jellysmithrave) July 20, 2026

On July 20, cryptocurrency analyst BATMAN observed that meme coin sector interest has been resurfacing after multiple weeks of subdued activity. BATMAN highlighted that PUMP had successfully reclaimed a critical support threshold and emphasized that heightened meme coin creation directly correlates with increased platform engagement and revenue generation for Pump.fun.

Recently, meme coins have been gaining traction and massive attention once again.

Because of that, $PUMP is finally looking interesting, with a recent breakout reclaiming a key support level.

More trading activity and coin launches means more revenue for… pic.twitter.com/KZWdb987MF

— BATMAN ⚡ (@CryptosBatman) July 20, 2026

Strategic Buyback Program Counters Unlock Pressure Pump.fun has implemented a substantial token buyback initiative. The platform has allocated approximately $410 million to repurchase PUMP tokens and has permanently removed 151.1 billion tokens from circulation through burning, effectively eliminating more than 15% of the initial supply.

The platform maintains a daily buyback pace of roughly $400,000, translating to approximately $12.85 million monthly. This figure closely aligns with projected team and investor token releases, estimated at around $12 million per month.

Analyst Ali Charts highlighted on X that approximately 82.5 billion PUMP tokens entered their initial significant insider unlock phase during July. Following a one-year vesting cliff, tokens allocated to team members and early investors — valued at roughly $125 million — became eligible for sale. The ongoing buyback initiative has effectively offset considerable portions of this selling pressure.

Around 82.5 billion $PUMP tokens are set to enter their first major insider unlock in July.

After a one-year cliff, team and early-investor tokens worth roughly $125 million became available to sell.

Given the size of the unlock relative to the circulating supply and average… https://t.co/RwFbzzoACb pic.twitter.com/ubfeR9i5xQ

— Ali Charts (@alicharts) July 21, 2026

Technical Analysis Outlook PUMP successfully escaped a multi-week consolidation zone bounded by $0.00140 and $0.00170. The price briefly exceeded $0.0020 before experiencing a modest retracement.

Currently, the token is positioned comfortably above its 20-day simple moving average of $0.00159 and its 50-day simple moving average of $0.00153. The Relative Strength Index registers 68.30, nearing but not yet entering overbought conditions.

Platform virality has contributed additional momentum. Jimothy the Raccoon (JIMOTHY) experienced a 186% surge and produced over $36 million in trading volume, amplifying overall engagement throughout the Pump.fun ecosystem.

Cumulatively, Pump.fun has produced approximately $1.2 billion in total revenue and facilitated over $800 million in SOL token sales through its launchpad infrastructure.

Hyperscale Data, the AI-focused data center company trading under the ticker GPUS on NYSE American, just added another 51.5 Bitcoin to its corporate treasury. The purchase brings its total stash to 1,087.4527 BTC, valued at roughly $70.3 million at a Bitcoin price of $64,691.

The acquisition was made through Ault Capital Group (ACG), a subsidiary, via open-market purchases during the week ending July 19, 2026. It’s the latest move in what has become a steady, methodical Bitcoin accumulation strategy that the company has pursued since early 2025.

A growing Bitcoin pile with a familiar playbook The company uses a two-pronged approach: mining Bitcoin directly and buying it on the open market. Earlier in its accumulation phase, holdings climbed toward 900 BTC. Then a 32.49 BTC purchase pushed the total to approximately 1,032.5 BTC, valued at around $65.8 million at the time. Now, with this latest 51.5 BTC buy, the company sits above the 1,000 BTC mark.

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Executive Chairman Milton “Todd” Ault III has been vocal about what he sees as a disconnect between the company’s market capitalization and the actual value sitting on its balance sheet. With Bitcoin holdings alone exceeding $70 million, and total reported assets reaching approximately $106.7 million as of late June 2026, he argues the market isn’t pricing in what the company actually owns.

The corporate Bitcoin treasury trend keeps expanding The company’s Bitcoin holdings represent a significant chunk of its total reported assets. At $70.3 million out of roughly $106.7 million in total assets, Bitcoin accounts for approximately two-thirds of everything the company owns on paper.

The strategy also includes a notable corporate restructuring on the horizon. Hyperscale Data plans to divest ACG during the second quarter of 2027 through an exchange involving 1,000,000 Series F Preferred shares, which were issued back on December 23, 2024.

What this means for investors With 1,087 BTC, the $70.3 million in Bitcoin represents real, liquid value that the company can point to when making the case that its equity is undervalued. When Bitcoin constitutes roughly two-thirds of total assets, the company’s fortunes become heavily correlated with crypto price movements.

The planned ACG divestiture adds another variable. If the separation goes through in Q2 2027 as planned, investors will need to evaluate how the Bitcoin holdings get allocated between the parent company and the spun-off entity, with the mechanics of the Series F Preferred Stock exchange creating complex valuation dynamics.

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

Galaxy has launched a new initiative aimed at preparing Bitcoin for the potential threat posed by quantum computing. 

The firm, which is spearheaded by cryptocurrency bull Mike Novogratz, has $5 million in grants to fund those developers who are specifically focused on post-quantum security solutions.

The Galaxy Bitcoin Quantum Readiness Initiative will support efforts to develop new signature schemes, Bitcoin upgrade proposals, wallet migration solutions, and so on. 

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The firm has noted that no quantum computer today can break Bitcoin’s security, but that could change "faster than expected," and the Bitcoin community is too conservative to implement a fix fast. 

The initiative will be built around developer funding, ongoing research through Galaxy Research, and a Quantum Advisory Council composed of experts in quantum computing and cryptography.

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"There’s a gap between the quantum computing world, which is moving fast, and the Bitcoin development world, which is just beginning to engage with post-quantum cryptography in earnest," Alex Thorn, the head of research at Galaxy Digital, said in a statement. 

The company said Bitcoin’s reliance on elliptic curve cryptography creates a long-term risk if sufficiently powerful quantum computers become available. However, Galaxy emphasized that no such quantum computer currently exists and that Bitcoin still has time to prepare.

Quantum risk is real Recently, Galaxy published an insightful report that examines Bitcoin’s potential vulnerabilities related to rapid advancements in the realm of quantum computing. 

According to the report, the main risk comes from the possibility that future quantum computers could be capable enough to break the flagship cryptocurrency's elliptic curve digital signatures. 

Millions of coins could be at risk under certain scenarios, according to some estimates.  

However, the firm argued that the risk is recognized and that developers are currently exploring mitigation strategies.

Slow-moving Bitcoin governance remains a major hurdle. BTC has no central authority, so any quantum-resistance upgrade would require great coordination among developers, miners, and so on. 

Wall Street analysts expect First BanCorp (FBP - Free Report) to post quarterly earnings of $0.54 per share in its upcoming report, which indicates a year-over-year increase of 8%. Revenues are expected to be $263.6 million, up 6.8% from the year-ago quarter.

Over the past 30 days, the consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged. This demonstrates the covering analysts' collective reassessment of their initial projections during this period.

Prior to a company's earnings announcement, it is crucial to consider revisions to earnings estimates. This serves as a significant indicator for predicting potential investor actions regarding the stock. Empirical research has consistently demonstrated a robust correlation between trends in earnings estimate revision and the short-term price performance of a stock.

While investors typically use consensus earnings and revenue estimates as a yardstick to evaluate the company's quarterly performance, scrutinizing analysts' projections for some of the company's key metrics can offer a more comprehensive perspective.

In light of this perspective, let's dive into the average estimates of certain First BanCorp metrics that are commonly tracked and forecasted by Wall Street analysts.

Analysts forecast 'Efficiency ratio' to reach 48.3%. Compared to the current estimate, the company reported 50.0% in the same quarter of the previous year.

Analysts' assessment points toward 'Net Interest Margin' reaching 5.0%. The estimate is in contrast to the year-ago figure of 4.7%.

According to the collective judgment of analysts, 'Total Interest-Earning Assets - Average Balance' should come in at $18.96 billion. The estimate compares to the year-ago value of $18.99 billion.

The consensus estimate for 'Card and processing income' stands at $11.94 million. The estimate is in contrast to the year-ago figure of $11.88 million.

Analysts predict that the 'Net interest income on a tax-equivalent basis and excluding valuations' will reach $237.71 million. Compared to the present estimate, the company reported $223.01 million in the same quarter last year.

The consensus among analysts is that 'Service charges and fees on deposit accounts' will reach $9.82 million. Compared to the current estimate, the company reported $9.76 million in the same quarter of the previous year.

Analysts expect 'Total non-interest income' to come in at $32.35 million. Compared to the current estimate, the company reported $30.95 million in the same quarter of the previous year.

The collective assessment of analysts points to an estimated 'Mortgage banking activities' of $3.87 million. Compared to the current estimate, the company reported $3.40 million in the same quarter of the previous year.

View all Key Company Metrics for First BanCorp here>>>

Over the past month, shares of First BanCorp have returned +6.6% versus the Zacks S&P 500 composite's -0.6% change. Currently, FBP carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), suggesting that it may outperform. the overall market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stocks here >>>> .

RADNOR, Pa., July 21, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP (www.ktmc.com), a nationally recognized securities litigation law firm, is investigating potential violations of the federal securities laws by HCA Healthcare, Inc. (NYSE: HCA) on behalf of investors who purchased or acquired HCA Healthcare, Inc. securities and experienced significant financial losses.

HCA Announces Disappointing Financial Results
On July 14, 2026, HCA issued a press release reporting its preliminary financial and operating results for the second quarter of 2026. Among other items, HCA sharply lowered its full-2026 profit guidance, citing an unfavorable shift in the company's payer mix, which impacted revenue by approximately $400 million in the quarter.

HCA’s Stock Drops Over 6%
Following the news of HCA’s poor financial results, HCA Healthcare, Inc.’s stock price fell over 6%.

CONTACT KTMC TO DISCUSS YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS:
If you purchased or acquired HCA Healthcare, Inc. securities and have lost money on your investment, please provide your information here: https://www.ktmc.com/hca-hca-healthcare-inc-investigation?utm_campaign=hc?utm_source=Globe&utm_medium=pressrelease&utm_campaign=hca&mktm=PR

You can also contact attorney Jonathan Naji, Esq. by calling (484) 270-1453 or by email at [email protected]. There is no cost or obligation to speak with an attorney.

ABOUT KESSLER TOPAZ MELTZER & CHECK, LLP (KTMC):

Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP (KTMC) is a leading U.S. plaintiff-side law firm focused on securities-fraud class actions and global investor protection. The firm represents individual investors as well as institutions, such as major pension funds, asset managers, and international investors. KTMC has led some of the largest recoveries in securities litigation and has been recognized by peers and the legal media with numerous accolades, including being recognized in Chambers & Partners USA 2026 as a Band 1 Top Firm in Securities and Class Actions, Legal 500’s Tier 1 Rankings for Securities and M&A Litigation, The National Law Journal’s Plaintiff’s Hot List and Trailblazers in Plaintiffs' Law, BTI Consulting Group’s Honor Roll of Most Feared Law Firms, The Legal Intelligencer’s Class Action Firm of the Year, Lawdragon’s Leading Plaintiff Financial Lawyers, and Law360’s Titans of the Plaintiffs Bar. The firm operates globally with offices in Pennsylvania and California. KTMC has recovered over $25 billion for our clients and the classes they represent.

CONTACT:
Jonathan Naji, Esq.
280 King of Prussia Road
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(484) 270-1453
[email protected]

May be considered attorney advertising in certain jurisdictions. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.

Standard Chartered’s roadmap has XRP at $28 by 2030. Read the fine print and every dollar above $3 depends on one bill passing a Senate that has sat on it for a year. The most institutional price target in crypto is a bet on Congress, trading at one-in-three odds.

Summary

Standard Chartered’s Geoffrey Kendrick cut his 2026 XRP target 65% in February, from $8 to $2.80, the deepest cut across the bank’s crypto coverage, while raising his long-range ladder to $7 in 2027, $12.60 in 2028, and $28 by 2030. The conditions are explicit: the near-term target needs only a macro recovery, but the 2027 and 2028 legs require the CLARITY Act to pass and spot ETF inflows to scale past $4 billion. The $28 endpoint assumes XRP becomes core financial infrastructure at a market cap near Bitcoin’s 2025 peak. Both conditions are currently failing. CLARITY has gone a year without a Senate floor vote, its text keeps slipping, and prediction markets price 2026 passage near one in three. ETF inflows have collapsed from $200 million a week to roughly $2 million. The honest math is stark: Bitwise’s formal valuation model spans $29.32 to 13 cents for 2030, a 200-fold range driven by the same binary assumptions, and analyst consensus clusters at $5 to $10 only “if CLARITY clears.” XRP trades near $1.10. Every institutional target above roughly $3 is, mechanically, a legislative forecast wearing a price target’s clothes, and holders pricing the roadmap without pricing the Senate are reading half the document. Price targets are supposed to be about assets. The most cited institutional forecast in XRP is, on inspection, about a legislature. Standard Chartered’s Geoffrey Kendrick, the closest thing crypto has to a house analyst on Wall Street, maintains a roadmap that carries XRP from roughly $1.10 today to $28 by 2030, and he has been unusually honest about the machinery underneath it: the near-term number needs nothing but a market recovery, while every rung above it requires the bill the roadmap depends on to become law and ETF money to arrive in billions. Those are not market variables. One is a bill that has spent a full year without a Senate floor vote, whose text has slipped repeatedly, and which prediction markets price near one-in-three for 2026; the other is a flow that has decayed from $200 million a week at launch to roughly $2 million now. The roadmap is rigorous, transparent, and conditional to its core, and the market that quotes its endpoints has mostly declined to read its conditions. This piece reads them, prices them, and asks what an XRP holder actually owns: an asset with an institutional bull case, or a leveraged position on the United States Congress.

The roadmap, with its fine print restored Kendrick’s forecast deserves to be laid out properly, because its evolution is more informative than any single number in it.

The original ladder, published in April 2025 while Ripple was still litigating with the SEC, projected $5.50 by the end of 2025, $8 by the end of 2026, and $12.50 by 2028, resting on three named catalysts: resolution of the SEC case, spot ETF inflows of $4 billion to $8 billion, and growing payments use. What happened next is the interesting part: the catalysts substantially arrived, the SEC dropped its appeal, spot XRP ETFs launched in November and pulled in over a billion dollars faster than any product since Ethereum’s, Ripple spent roughly $2.7 billion assembling a prime brokerage and treasury stack, and the price went to $1.16 anyway, its lowest in fifteen months, dragged by a market-wide selloff Kendrick described as capitulation-prone. His February response was the deepest cut in the bank’s crypto book, the 2026 target from $8 to $2.80, alongside reductions for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana.

And then the detail most coverage skipped: he raised the far end. The revised ladder runs $2.80 this year, $7 in 2027, $12.60 in 2028, $19.60 in 2029, $28 in 2030, with the long-range numbers lifted even as the near ones fell. The conditions attached are explicit in the bank’s work and in every serious reading of it. The $2.80 leg requires only macro repair, lower rates, risk appetite, a crypto market that stops falling. The $7 and $12.60 legs require the CLARITY Act to pass and cumulative ETF inflows to scale beyond $4 billion. The $28 endpoint requires XRP to stop being a traded asset and become, in the bank’s own blunt framing, core global financial infrastructure, at a market capitalization near $1.7 trillion, which is approximately what all of Bitcoin was worth at its October 2025 peak. The roadmap is not a prediction that compounds; it is a staircase where each step has a named gatekeeper, and from the second step up, the gatekeeper is the federal government.

The conditions, marked to market Take the two named conditions and price them with current data, because that exercise is the entire article.

Condition one: CLARITY becomes law. The bill’s year has been a study in almost. It cleared the Senate Banking Committee in May on a bipartisan 15-9 vote, which was real progress and is also the last floor-adjacent event it has produced. The revised text has slipped repeatedly, most recently after a White House meeting failed to break the deadlock, with the merged draft’s ethics provisions, the Trump family’s crypto holdings, and Democratic co-sponsorship all unresolved; not one Democrat currently backs the draft in circulation, and the August recess eats the calendar from the other end. Prediction markets, which watched the same year happen, price 2026 passage around 32%, down from near 50% in the spring. Senator Lummis has warned publicly that missing this window could shelve the bill for years. None of this makes passage impossible, majorities want a market-structure law in the abstract, but a one-in-three market probability is what the condition is currently worth, and the roadmap’s $7-and-above rungs inherit that discount factor whole.

Condition two: ETF inflows past $4 billion. For readers needing the base mechanics, crypto.news has explained how the flow condition is measured. The products launched spectacularly, $667 million in the first month, a billion dollars faster than any recent debut, an eight-week inflow streak that ran even as Bitcoin funds bled. Then the decay set in, and the current run-rate is the condition’s obituary: weekly flows that touched $200 million now measure around $2 million, July has printed zero-inflow days and the first outflows, cumulative inflows sit near $1.49 billion, barely a third of the condition’s threshold, and the assets that did arrive are roughly $493 million underwater against a $1.10 token. The internals are thinner than the totals: some 82% of complex assets sit in three funds, and a category-level inflow day increasingly means two issuers’ sales desks had a decent Thursday while five products recorded nothing. Analysts modeling the flows tie their recovery to, of all things, condition one, arguing institutional allocation resumes when legal status is permanent, which means the two conditions are not independent. They are one condition wearing two hats, and the hat that matters sits in the Senate.

The case for the conditional bull The strongest honest version of the roadmap’s defense is worth stating fully, because Kendrick is not naive and the structure of his call has real merit.

Conditional targets are what rigorous analysis looks like. A forecast that names its dependencies, CLARITY, $4 billion of flows, infrastructure adoption, is falsifiable and updatable in a way that round-number moonmath never is, and Kendrick’s willingness to cut his own headline number 65% in public is the behavior of an analyst marking to reality instead of defending a franchise. Note also what he did at the long end: raised it, on the argument that the fundamental build-out, the acquisitions, the licenses, the ETF wrapper existing at all, improved XRP’s decade even as its year collapsed. That is a coherent position, not a hedge.

The legislative bet itself is less speculative than a one-in-three market price makes it sound, on this view. Market-structure legislation has bipartisan support in principle, an industry spending historic sums to get it, a White House demanding it, and a predecessor, GENIUS, that proved the votes exist when text and politics align. Bills look dead until the week they pass; prediction markets priced GENIUS pessimistically inside its own final month. If CLARITY or any successor framework lands in 2027 instead of 2026, the roadmap’s ladder shifts a year without breaking, and an asset priced at $1.10 against a $7 conditional target offers the kind of asymmetry institutional allocators are paid to notice. The Bitwise model’s bull leg reaching $29.32 says a formal valuation framework, not just a bank’s conviction, can generate these numbers when the assumptions fire.

And beneath both conditions sits the quiet third catalyst the roadmap only gestures at: the institutional stack behind the thesis, the trust-bank charter awaiting final approval, the pending Fed master account that would be a first for a crypto-native firm, the prime brokerage clearing trillions. If that stack converts into settled volume that actually requires the token, the fee-and-utility floor under the price rises regardless of Washington’s calendar. The bulls’ summary is fair: the conditions are named, the discount is priced, and the asymmetry is the product.

LATEST: Ripple accelerates its evolution with deep liquidity, growing $XRP reserves, native stablecoin, Hidden Road integration, banking access, and institutional settlement engine pic.twitter.com/CoXOfAYveE

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) April 19, 2026 The case that a conditional target is not a target The skeptical reading does not dispute Kendrick’s numbers. It disputes what kind of object they are.

A price target whose upper rungs require an act of Congress is a legislative forecast, and banks are not better at those than prediction markets are. The one-in-three CLARITY price is not an inefficiency waiting to be arbitraged by people who read committee schedules; it is the aggregated judgment of a market that has watched this specific bill slip for a year, and the roadmap’s expected value collapses once the conditions are weighted honestly. Multiply the ladder out: $7 in 2027 at a one-in-three legislative probability, further discounted by an ETF condition running at a third of its threshold with decaying flows, prices the conditional rungs somewhere far below the headline, which is, notably, roughly where the market actually trades the token. On this reading, XRP at $1.10 is not ignoring the institutional bull case. It is pricing it correctly, conditions included, and the gap between spot and roadmap measures the conditions’ improbability rather than the market’s ignorance.

The Bitwise spread makes the point mathematically. A formal model that outputs $29.32 in its bull state and 13 cents in its bear state for the same asset in the same year is not describing a range of outcomes for a business; it is describing a binary event with a token attached. Two hundred-fold spreads do not appear in the valuation of assets whose futures are continuous; they appear when everything depends on a switch, and the switch here, the regulatory ground under the target plus the institutional adoption it gates, sits outside the asset entirely. Holders own exposure to the switch without any influence over it, which is a structurally different proposition from owning a claim on a growing system, and it deserves a different name than price target.

History supplies the uncomfortable base rate. XRP’s community has already lived one complete cycle of this structure: years of arguing the SEC case was the only thing suppressing the price, followed by the case resolving, the ETFs launching, the acquisitions closing, and the token underperforming the entire asset class anyway, down more than 60% from its 2025 high while its catalysts fired one by one. The lesson the tape taught, that clearing the named obstacle does not deliver the promised repricing, is precisely the risk the new roadmap reproduces at a higher level of government. And the flows condition has already offered its preview: the ETFs arrived, the inflows came, the price fell through all eight weeks of the streak, and the buyers stopped. A thesis that failed its own dress rehearsal does not become sturdier by moving the decisive scene to the Senate floor.

The roadmap’s quiet third catalyst deserves fuller treatment before the verdict, because it is the one input whose calendar Washington does not control alone. Ripple’s institutional stack has kept compounding straight through the price collapse: the national trust bank charter, conditionally approved in December, awaits final OCC sign-off, with only one crypto-native firm ever having completed that journey; the Federal Reserve master account application, which would give a crypto company direct access to the central bank’s payment rails for the first time, sits in a queue the Fed has formally paused for new Tier 3 decisions until the end of 2026, with Kraken’s five-year path to approval as the only precedent; and the prime brokerage assembled from the Hidden Road acquisition now clears institutional volume at a scale no other crypto firm matches. Analysts modeling the master-account scenario describe it as the catalyst no price target has fully priced, the event that would move XRP’s story from regulatory permission to infrastructure incumbency. The honest caveat is that this catalyst shares the others’ defect at one remove: charters and master accounts are also government decisions, made by regulators instead of legislators, on calendars measured in years. The stack is real, its compounding is observable, and its conversion into token demand remains the same unproven step the whole thesis keeps deferring. It widens the bull case’s foundations without shortening its timeline, which is precisely why the bank parked it under the 2029 and 2030 rungs, not the near ones.

The comparison set inside the ETF complex sharpens the flow condition further, because the aggregate numbers hide a structure that matters for whether $4 billion is even reachable. Seven US spot XRP products launched within weeks of each other, and the field has already stratified beyond recovery: Bitwise, Canary, and Franklin hold roughly 82% of complex assets, the remaining funds regularly print zero-flow days, and the best single day of July, under $7 million, came almost entirely from two issuers’ distribution. That concentration converts the headline condition into a narrower question than the roadmap implies. Getting from $1.49 billion to $4 billion does not require a market-wide change of heart about XRP; it requires two or three sales organizations to find another two and a half billion dollars of allocator demand for a product their clients currently hold at a half-billion-dollar unrealized loss. Fund flows follow performance with a lag in both directions, which is how the launch streak ran eight weeks into a falling price and why the decay since has been so complete. The precedent that haunts the setup is the launch itself: XRP reached its first billion of ETF inflows faster than any asset since Ethereum, an achievement the roadmap’s original version treated as the catalyst arriving, and the price fell throughout. A condition that was substantially met once, at maximum velocity, without producing the predicted repricing, now needs to be met again, from a lower base, against worse performance, before the next rung unlocks. That is the version of the flow condition an allocator actually faces, and it is meaningfully harder than the single cumulative number in the bank’s fine print suggests.

What a holder actually owns Strip the argument to its usable core and the position clarifies.

Below roughly $3, XRP’s institutional targets are macro calls, and the asset trades like the rest of the risk complex, with the same Fed, the same liquidity, the same beta. In that band, the roadmap says little that Bitcoin’s chart does not. Above roughly $3, every institutional number in circulation, Kendrick’s $7 and $12.60 and $28, the consensus $5-to-$10 cluster, Bitwise’s bull leg, is conditioned on the same two-headed event: American market-structure law passing and the institutional allocation it is assumed to unlock. A holder at $1.10 therefore owns three stacked exposures, a crypto-market beta, a Washington binary priced near one-in-three, and a residual bet that legal clarity converts into token demand, the step the SEC-resolution cycle already failed to deliver once.

None of that makes the position irrational; binaries with asymmetric payoffs are a legitimate thing to own, and the roadmap’s transparency about its conditions is exactly what makes the position priceable at all. What it makes irrational is quoting the ladder without its gates, and the gates have a calendar. The floor-vote window before the August recess, the fall session after it, and the 2027 political cycle beyond are, mechanically, the price target’s actual chart. Watch Polymarket’s CLARITY line before watching XRP’s, watch the weekly ETF prints for any sign the $4 billion condition resurrects, and watch whether the text that keeps slipping ever stops slipping. The bank told everyone precisely what has to happen. The market is telling everyone precisely how likely it thinks that is. The only mistake available to a holder is reading one document and not the other. Crypto.news has also explained why reading institutional positioning honestly means treating delayed disclosures and flow headlines as conditions, not proof.

Frequently asked questions What is Standard Chartered’s current XRP forecast? The bank’s revised roadmap, published with its February cuts, projects $2.80 for end-2026, $7 in 2027, $12.60 in 2028, $19.60 in 2029, and $28 by 2030. The 2026 target was cut 65% from $8, the largest reduction across the bank’s crypto coverage, while the longer-range targets were raised. At $28, XRP’s market capitalization would reach roughly $1.7 trillion, near Bitcoin’s October 2025 peak value.

What conditions does the roadmap depend on? Explicitly stated ones. The $2.80 leg requires only a broad crypto-market recovery. The $7 and $12.60 legs require the CLARITY Act to pass and cumulative spot ETF inflows to scale past $4 billion. The $28 endpoint assumes XRP becomes core global financial infrastructure rather than a traded asset. The bank’s original 2025 roadmap carried similar named catalysts: SEC case resolution, ETF inflows, and payments adoption.

How likely is the CLARITY Act to pass? Prediction markets currently price 2026 passage around 32%, down from near 50% in spring. The bill cleared the Senate Banking Committee 15-9 in May but has gone a year without a floor vote, its revised text has slipped repeatedly including after a failed White House meeting, no Democrat backs the current draft, and the August recess shortens the calendar. Senator Lummis has warned a missed window could shelve it for years.

How are the ETF inflows tracking against the $4 billion condition? Poorly. Cumulative net inflows sit near $1.49 billion since the November launch, roughly a third of the threshold, and the run-rate has collapsed from about $200 million a week at launch to around $2 million, with July printing zero-inflow days and the streak’s first outflows. Assets are roughly $493 million underwater at current prices, and about 82% of the complex sits in just three funds.

Why did XRP fall even as its earlier catalysts arrived? That is the cycle’s hardest lesson. The SEC dropped its appeal, spot ETFs launched with record early demand, and Ripple deployed roughly $2.7 billion on institutional acquisitions, yet the token fell more than 60% from its 2025 high with the broader market. Analysts attribute the gap to macro conditions, persistent early-holder selling, and the structural fact that network adoption does not automatically create token demand.

What does the Bitwise model’s range mean? Bitwise’s formal valuation framework outputs 2030 scenarios from $29.32 down to 13 cents, a roughly 200-fold spread. Ranges that wide indicate a binary structure: the outcomes depend overwhelmingly on whether legal clarity and institutional adoption fire, not on incremental business performance. It is the same conditionality as the bank roadmap, expressed as a probability distribution rather than a ladder.

Is a conditional price target still useful? Yes, if read whole. Named conditions make a forecast falsifiable and updatable, and Kendrick’s public 65% cut shows marking to reality. The danger is quoting the ladder without its gates: above roughly $3, every institutional XRP target in circulation depends on the same legislative and flow conditions, so the honest way to use the roadmap is to track the conditions, Polymarket’s CLARITY odds and weekly ETF prints, alongside the price.

What should XRP holders watch next? Three calendars. The Senate floor window before the August recess and the fall session, since the legislative condition dominates everything above $3. The weekly ETF flow prints, for any sign the $4 billion condition revives, including whether inflows broaden beyond the three dominant funds. And Ripple’s institutional stack, final trust-bank approval and the pending Fed master account, which is the roadmap’s quiet third catalyst. This is not investment advice.

Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. It discusses analyst forecasts and legislative probabilities that can change quickly and may prove wrong in either direction. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 21, 2026.

Ripple-backed XRP Ledger’s newest software update is starting to roll out as The number of validators upgrading to v3.2.0 is increasing. According to the recent XRPL Explorer data, 66% of the trusted validators are running the release. The migration progresses while the network is getting ready for the amendment, called fixCleanup3_2_0.

XRP Ledger v3.2.0 Sees Increasing Validator Support As per the upgrade tracker, there are now 99 validators running v3.2.0. This is 66% of the validator set. It also reveals 481 nodes (57.33%) are running the latest version. However, there is still significant use of older software. Version 3.1.3 is still on 42 validators, representing 28% of the total. It also has 322 nodes that are powered, representing 38.38% of all 825 nodes.

The XRP Ledger has a very critical amendment process. They must be supported by over 80% of the trusted validators. That support should not change during 2 consecutive weeks. The new statistics indicate the network is still short of that. To reach the threshold, another 25 percentage points of additional adoption are needed for v3.2.0.

XRP Ledger version 3.2.0 includes a number of technical enhancements as it covers infrastructure improvements. It is also packed with fixes and developer enhancements. There is one major change via XLS-0095.

The proposal officially changes the name of the server software from rippled to xrpld. The rollout started on June 15. The configuration paths need to be updated for validators and node operators. They also need to update deployment scripts, metadata references, and database directories.

About The Fix Amendment The fixCleanup3_2_0 amendment has already passed the necessary voting level. Currently, it has 85.71% validator support. For this, 30 validators cast their votes in favor while six validators voted against.

The proposed plan is now in the required two-week activation process. The activation period will be July 29, 2026, at 09:57 UTC. It will continue as long as support remains above 80% for the entire countdown.

The node operators are advised to upgrade their nodes before activation as per XRPL validator Vet. The mod is an enhancement to the existing features, rather than new additions. Resolves some accuracy and rounding problems in Single Asset Vaults and Lending Protocol. It also fixes problems related to the Permissioned DEX and Permissioned Domains.

Washington has been arguing about who gets to regulate crypto for years. By July 23, XRP holders may finally get an answer, at least on paper.

The CLARITY Act, which would formally define which digital assets fall under the SEC’s jurisdiction and which belong to the CFTC, is approaching what traders and lobbyists are treating as a soft deadline. Senate leadership has signaled a late-July target for floor action, and markets are pricing in a real probability of passage.

What the CLARITY Act actually does The CLARITY Act tries to write the rule book. It would establish a framework for classifying digital assets, draw a cleaner line between SEC and CFTC oversight, and give projects a pathway to shift from securities status to commodity status once a network becomes sufficiently decentralized.

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The bill cleared the House and advanced through the Senate Banking Committee as of May 14, 2026. Passage requires 60 votes, which means the bill needs bipartisan support to survive a filibuster. Two sticking points are holding things up: provisions around ethics disclosures for public officials holding digital assets, and language related to illicit finance and anti-money laundering obligations.

Why XRP specifically is watching this so closely The SEC sued Ripple Labs in late 2020, alleging that XRP was an unregistered security. A federal judge ruled in 2023 that XRP sold on public exchanges did not constitute securities transactions. The CLARITY Act, if passed, could effectively close that file by reclassifying XRP as a digital commodity under CFTC oversight.

Commodity-classified assets face a different, and generally less burdensome, regulatory regime than securities. Exchanges can list them without the same disclosure infrastructure. Fund managers can build ETF products around them more easily. XRP-linked ETF applications are already in motion at the SEC.

What investors should watch between now and the deadline The July 23 window isn’t a formal legislative deadline. What it reflects is the Senate’s stated intent to address the crypto market structure bill before the August recess. Missing the window doesn’t kill the bill, but it extends the uncertainty. August recess means September at the earliest for floor action, and fall legislative calendars fill up fast with budget fights and appropriations deadlines.

The 2023 court ruling sent XRP up significantly in a single session. A Senate vote, whether yes or no, will likely produce a similar response.

The CLARITY Act isn’t XRP-specific legislation. A successful passage would establish a framework that applies across hundreds of digital assets. Ethereum, Solana, and a long list of layer-2 and DeFi tokens all sit in the same jurisdictional gray zone that the bill is trying to resolve.

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

Ethereum chatter has collapsed to 2020 levels while banks build on the chain and a nonprofit teaches institutions to buy it. The token trades as if neither audience exists. Three groups are pricing three different assets, and only one of them is right.

Summary

Retail attention on Ethereum has collapsed: tweet volume is at 12-month lows near 40,000 mentions, levels last seen in 2020, NFT activity has gone quiet, and daily active addresses have fallen from above 1.5 million in January toward 544,000. Institutional commitment is moving the opposite way: a dedicated nonprofit launched to onboard institutions, tokenization is a headline topic in traditional finance, ETF flows turned positive again in July, and BlackRock, JPMorgan, and Robinhood all build on Ethereum rails. The price has ignored both signals, trading near $1,800, down roughly 42% this year and about 64% from its August peak near $5,000, while network fee revenue sits near cycle lows. The loudest defection came from inside: Bankless co-founder David Hoffman sold his remaining ETH in May, arguing the money thesis has run its course, and doubled down this month on the fee problem behind it. The divergence resolves through one question, value accrual: whether the activity institutions bring ever becomes fees the token captures. Retail priced a story that died. Institutions price rails that work. The token prices cash flows that keep falling. Three different groups of people are currently looking at Ethereum, and they are not seeing the same asset. The first group, crypto-native retail, has mostly stopped looking: social mentions of Ethereum have fallen to roughly 40,000, a level last recorded in 2020 when Wall Street did not know the chain existed, and the loud consumer corners of the ecosystem, NFTs above all, have gone quiet enough to hear the servers hum. The second group, institutional finance, is arriving in the opposite direction, with a purpose-built nonprofit teaching banks how to hold ETH, tokenization on every conference agenda, and the largest asset managers in the world settling real products on Ethereum rails. And the third participant, the market itself, is pricing the token as if neither group matters: ETH trades near $1,800, down about 42% on the year and nearly two-thirds below its August peak, while the chain’s fee revenue scrapes along at cycle lows. In May, the divergence produced its emblematic moment, when one of Ethereum’s most committed public advocates announced he had sold every coin he owned while insisting he still believed in the network. All three groups are behaving rationally. They are simply pricing three different things, and working out which of the three the token actually is has become the most consequential question in crypto’s second-largest asset.

The retail exit, measured The evidence that ordinary crypto users have checked out of Ethereum is not anecdotal; it shows up in every proxy for attention and grassroots usage at once.

The cleanest measure is the crudest: how much people talk about it. Tweet volume for Ethereum has fallen to fresh 12-month lows around 40,000 mentions, with Bitcoin near 130,000, and the comparison point is what makes the number land, because attention this low was last seen in 2020, before the ETFs, before the Merge, before the institutional era the industry spent a decade demanding. Social chatter is a rough instrument, but it has historically tracked retail capital and marked cycle temperature, and its collapse while institutional adoption sets records is precisely the inversion that makes this moment strange. Rising mentions once meant rising retail inflows; now the crowd that generates mentions has left the theater.

On-chain, the story repeats with better instrumentation. Daily active addresses, above 1.5 million in January, have trended down toward 544,000, a fall of nearly two-thirds that tracks the price drawdown from above $3,400 in December to under $2,000. The consumer economy that once made Ethereum a cultural object, NFT trading, consumer mints, the speculative long tail, has thinned to the point where daily NFT volumes measure in the hundreds of thousands of dollars against a $41 billion DeFi treasury sitting largely still. The capital stayed; the crowd left. Total value locked has barely budged through the attention collapse, which tells you who remains: professional and semi-professional capital that thinks in quarters, parked in lending markets and liquid staking, indifferent to vibes.

The generous reading of the exit is rotation, that retail attention went to memecoins on faster chains and to the AI trade, and rotations reverse. The harsher reading is that Ethereum’s retail base was loyal to a story, the ultrasound money, world-computer, ETH-is-money story, and stories do not survive a 64% drawdown from peak while the supply inflates and the burn sits idle. Either way, the measurable fact stands: the audience that carried Ethereum through every previous cycle is not currently in the building.

The institutional entry, measured Run the same exercise on institutions and every needle points the other way, which is what makes this a divergence, not a decline.

The most explicit signal is organizational: the launch of Ethereum Institutional, a nonprofit created specifically to educate banks, asset managers, and corporates on adopting Ethereum, with contributors drawn from the ecosystem’s core. Institutions do not get dedicated onboarding bodies for networks in decline; the entity exists because inbound demand outgrew the ecosystem’s capacity to answer it. Around it sits a thickening layer of professional evangelism, Etherealize pitching Wall Street directly, with its leadership publicly arguing that institutional engagement has moved past pilots into production, and a restructured Ethereum Foundation spinning out ETH Systems as a for-profit focused on institutional privacy tooling, funded by trading firms and treasuries. The ecosystem is visibly reorganizing itself around the client it now serves.

The client, meanwhile, keeps shipping. The tokenization wave that dominates traditional-finance conferences runs disproportionately on Ethereum and its L2s: BlackRock’s tokenized fund complex, JPMorgan’s settlement infrastructure reaching public rails, Robinhood building its chain as an Ethereum L2, stablecoin issuance concentrating on the network that hosts the deepest collateral markets. For more context on the institutional product driving adoption, crypto.news has explained how tokenized money market funds are moving regulated cash instruments on-chain. Even the flow data, the weakest leg of the institutional case, has stopped arguing against it: after a heavy second quarter of net outflows, US spot ETH ETFs turned positive again in July, with inflow days in the tens of millions, uneven but real. And the treasury bid persists through the drawdown, with corporate and fund vehicles continuing to accumulate at prices the retail cycle would have considered a catastrophe.

Institutions, in short, are doing exactly what the industry spent years saying it wanted: adopting the infrastructure, at scale, without asking permission from the price. Which sharpens the puzzle instead of resolving it, because their arrival has coincided with the asset’s worst sustained underperformance of the modern era.

The defection that named the problem The reason the price ignores both audiences was articulated most clearly by the person whose exit hurt the narrative most.

David Hoffman spent years as one of Ethereum’s most effective advocates, co-founding Bankless and popularizing the ETH-is-money thesis, the argument that Ethereum’s token would become the internet’s base money, scarce, productive, and re-rated accordingly. On May 21 he sold the last of his personal ETH, and his explanation was more damaging than the sale: the thesis, he argued, has largely run its course, with ETH unlikely to be re-rated meaningfully higher or lower from here, money to some degree, but not the maximally successful version the ecosystem set out to build. Former core developer Eric Connor’s response compounded it, noting ETH has grossly underperformed the broader crypto market for years and attributing the lag to relentless supply from early millionaires, not protocol failure, an explanation that manages to be reassuring about the technology and damning about the asset simultaneously.

Hoffman has kept pressing the underlying point since, arguing this month that Ethereum faces a false choice between maximizing fees and being money, and that while it hesitates, distribution-rich competitors, Robinhood’s chain among them, are positioned to eat the revenue base out from under it. That is the distribution rival eating the revenue base. Strip the personalities away and his case reduces to an arithmetic claim: layer-one tokens are ultimately priced on the fees their block space earns, Ethereum deliberately pushed activity to L2s that pay almost nothing back, mainnet fee revenue has fallen from roughly $40 million a day in early 2025 toward $10 million, and no amount of institutional construction on top of the network changes the token’s cash flows if the construction happens where the token does not collect rent. It is the value-accrual critique, delivered by someone who spent five years selling the opposite conclusion, which is exactly why it landed.

Three prices for three assets Here is the resolution of the divergence, and it requires taking all three groups seriously at once, because each is pricing a real thing.

Retail priced the story, and the story died. The asset retail owned was ultrasound money: a supply that shrinks with use, a burn that turns adoption into scarcity, a meme that fit on a sticker and compounded reflexively. That asset genuinely existed for a stretch after the Merge and genuinely does not now, with the burn collapsed, supply mildly inflating, and the December blob-fee floor a patch on the leak, not a restoration. That is the monetary mechanics under this divergence. Attention followed the story out. Retail is not wrong to be gone; the thing it bought is gone.

Institutions price the rails, and the rails work. The asset institutions are adopting is not the token’s monetary narrative but the network’s properties: the deepest liquidity, the most battle-tested settlement, the compliance tooling, the credible neutrality that lets BlackRock and a DeFi protocol share infrastructure. That asset is thriving, and nothing in the price contradicts it, because most institutional use, tokenized funds, L2 settlement, stablecoin rails, consumes Ethereum’s security while paying trivially for it. Institutions are not wrong to build; the thing they are buying works regardless of what ETH costs.

The market prices the cash flows, and the cash flows are falling. The token, stripped of both stories, is a claim on fees plus a staking yield plus a monetary premium the market is currently revoking. Fee revenue down roughly three-quarters from early 2025, activity migrated to venues that remit almost nothing, and a persistent seller overhang from the early-holder class Connor described: the price is not ignoring the fundamentals, it is agreeing with them, and its verdict is that until institutional construction becomes token revenue, construction is not a bull case.

Which means the entire divergence compresses into one testable question: does the institutional economy on Ethereum ever start paying Ethereum? The mechanisms are known and partly shipped, the blob-fee floor reconnecting L2 growth to burn, mainnet settlement of high-value tokenized assets that does pay real fees, staking demand from treasuries and ETFs that locks supply. If tokenization scales and its settlement gravity pulls value to mainnet, the fee line inflects, and the market re-rates the token toward what institutions already believe about the network. If the activity stays where the rent is lowest, Ethereum becomes magnificent public infrastructure attached to a stagnant asset, the outcome Hoffman priced when he sold. Both futures are live. The tape, for now, is voting with him, and the burden of proof sits, for the first time in Ethereum’s history, on the bulls’ arithmetic rather than their story.

One more actor deserves a paragraph before the watchlist, because the divergence is reorganizing Ethereum’s own institutions in real time. The Ethereum Foundation, historically the ecosystem’s ambivalent center, has spent the year restructuring around exactly the split this piece describes: research and protocol work continuing in the nonprofit core, a new institutional-outreach apparatus forming at arm’s length, and ETH Systems spinning out as a for-profit, funded by trading firms and corporate treasuries, to build the privacy and compliance tooling institutional users keep requesting. Longtime contributors have scattered across the new entities, and the ecosystem’s own commentators describe the reorganization with a candor that borders on gallows humor. The institutional turn, in other words, is not something happening to Ethereum from outside; it is something Ethereum’s leadership has chosen, budgeted, and staffed, accepting the retail exit as a completed fact and reallocating toward the audience that stayed. That choice has consequences for the token question this piece turns on. An ecosystem organized around institutional settlement will prioritize exactly the upgrades, privacy, compliance hooks, high-value mainnet settlement, most likely to make institutional activity pay mainnet fees, which is the bull path. It will also, inevitably, deprioritize the consumer-facing culture that once generated the monetary meme, which forecloses the old path back. The foundation has effectively placed the ecosystem’s bet for it: that the second audience can be converted into revenue before the absence of the first audience becomes terminal for the asset’s premium. The fee line, again, will grade the wager.

What to watch Three lines on three charts settle this faster than any debate.

The fee line. Daily network fee revenue near $10 million is the bear case in one number; a sustained inflection, driven by blob-fee floors under growing L2 volume or high-value mainnet settlement, is the single cleanest signal the value-accrual gap is closing. Watch the trend through the fall, not any single week. That is where the fee line actually comes from.

The flow composition. ETF inflows resumed in July after a negative quarter; whether they compound, and whether staking-enabled vehicles and treasuries keep locking supply through price weakness, tests whether the institutional bid extends from the network to the token. Uneven, headline-driven flows extend the stalemate; a durable streak changes the supply math. Crypto.news has also explained how the flow machinery works.

The attention floor. Retail metrics this depressed have historically marked accumulation zones as often as terminal decline, and tweet volume at 2020 levels with institutional adoption at record highs is a configuration crypto has simply never printed before. If price ever starts responding to the institutional story, the crowd’s return would be the accelerant. Its continued absence is the cheapest real-time measure of how dead the old narrative remains.

Ethereum’s strange summer is best understood as an estate in probate. The old asset, the retail money-meme, has died, and its heirs have left. The new asset, institutional settlement infrastructure, is thriving but pays no rent to the name on the deed. And the token is the estate itself, valued daily by a market that only counts income. The network has never been more used or less loved, and the gap between those two facts is either the buying opportunity of the cycle or the proof that usage was never the same thing as value. Three audiences have placed their bets. The fee line will grade them.

Frequently asked questions What does the retail exit from Ethereum look like? Tweet volume for Ethereum has fallen to roughly 40,000 mentions, a 12-month low last seen in 2020, while Bitcoin sits near 130,000. Daily active addresses have declined from above 1.5 million in January toward 544,000, NFT activity has thinned to daily volumes in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the consumer-speculative corners of the ecosystem have gone broadly quiet, even as DeFi’s roughly $41 billion in locked value stays put.

What is the evidence institutions are moving in? A dedicated nonprofit, Ethereum Institutional, launched to onboard banks and asset managers, alongside Etherealize’s direct Wall Street outreach and the Ethereum Foundation spinning out a for-profit institutional tooling arm. BlackRock’s tokenized funds, JPMorgan’s settlement rails, and Robinhood’s L2 all build on Ethereum, tokenization dominates traditional-finance agendas, ETH ETF flows turned positive again in July, and treasury vehicles kept accumulating through the drawdown.

Why did David Hoffman sell his ETH? The Bankless co-founder sold his remaining ETH on May 21, arguing the ETH-is-money thesis has largely run its course and that he does not expect the market to re-rate the asset meaningfully in either direction. He has since pressed the structural point: layer-one tokens are priced on fees, Ethereum’s activity moved to L2s that pay almost nothing back, and competitors with distribution are positioned to erode the remaining revenue base.

Why is the ETH price ignoring institutional adoption? Because most institutional use pays the token almost nothing. Tokenized funds, L2 settlement, and stablecoin rails consume Ethereum’s security while generating minimal mainnet fees, and daily fee revenue has fallen from roughly $40 million in early 2025 toward $10 million. The market prices the token on cash flows plus monetary premium, and with the premium fading and fees falling, the price tracks the arithmetic, not the adoption headlines.

Is this different from the ultrasound money problem? It is the same root with a different face. The ultrasound story broke because cheap L2 data ended the fee burn that made ETH deflationary, which is monetary mechanics. This divergence is about audiences: retail owned the monetary story and left when it died, institutions own the infrastructure story and keep building, and the token’s price follows fees rather than either narrative. The December blob-fee floor addresses both by reconnecting L2 growth to mainnet revenue, at a baseline level.

What would make the price start responding? A durable inflection in fee revenue is the cleanest trigger: growing L2 volume paying meaningful blob fees under the December floor, high-value tokenized-asset settlement on mainnet, and staking demand locking supply through ETFs and treasuries. If institutional activity starts converting into token cash flows, the market has something to re-rate. Without that conversion, adoption and price can stay decoupled indefinitely.

Could retail attention at 2020 levels be a buy signal? Historically, deeply depressed attention has coincided with accumulation zones as often as with terminal decline, and the current configuration, record institutional adoption against 2020-level retail interest, has no precedent to price from. Low attention removes a reflexive bid but also exhausts sellers. It is a condition, not a signal, and its resolution depends on the fee and flow lines rather than on sentiment itself. This is not investment advice.

What are the key numbers to track from here? Daily network fee revenue against the roughly $10 million cycle low, the persistence of ETH ETF inflows after July’s turn positive, staking and treasury accumulation as a share of supply, active addresses against the 544,000 area, and the growth of tokenized-asset settlement that pays mainnet fees. Together they answer the only question that closes the divergence: whether use of Ethereum ever becomes revenue for ETH.

Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. It describes market conditions and network metrics that change quickly, and past patterns do not guarantee future outcomes. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 21, 2026.

Cardano price has surged 9.3% to an intraday high of $0.176 after the Van Rossem hard fork activated Protocol Version 11, while improving risk appetite and whale accumulation have supported bullish sentiment.

Summary

Cardano price surged 9.3% after the Van Rossem hard fork activated Protocol Version 11. A 4-hour rounding bottom places $0.20 within reach if ADA clears $0.18 resistance. Whale accumulation supports the recovery, but weak DeFi activity and geopolitical risks remain. According to data from crypto.news, Cardano (ADA) price traded near $0.1745 at press time on July 21 after briefly giving back part of the advance. The token cleared the $0.166 resistance that had capped several recovery attempts during July, while daily trading volume rose as buyers returned after the weekend upgrade.

Cardano activated Van Rossem on July 18 after delegated representatives, stake pool operators, and the Constitutional Committee approved the proposal through the Voltaire governance system. As crypto.news reported, the vote secured 77.63% DRep approval, 52.7% support from stake pool operators, and six affirmative Constitutional Committee votes.

Protocol Version 11 introduced new Plutus functions, revised smart contract cost models, zero-knowledge proof support, and tighter node-security requirements. The event became Cardano’s first major protocol upgrade to complete the full proposal, debate, and ratification process through on-chain governance.

Commenting on the upgrade, Cardano delegated representative Jason Appleton described the governance process as a key part of the event.

“The best part: it was ratified on-chain by delegated community reps before activation. Upgrades by governance, not decree.”

A sustained break above $0.18 would put $0.20 within reach ADA’s 4-hour chart has developed a rounding-bottom structure from the July 13 low near $0.155. Price has since formed progressively higher lows and pushed through the pattern’s first resistance area between $0.170 and $0.173.

Cardano price has formed a rounding bottom pattern on the 4-hour chart — July 21 | Source: crypto.news The structure places its neckline at $0.20, where ADA reached a local high in early July. Before testing that level, bulls must overcome resistance around $0.177 and the three-day liquidation cluster near $0.180. A move from the current price to $0.20 would produce a further gain of roughly 14.6%.

Buying pressure has also strengthened on the 4-hour timeframe. The MACD line stands at 0.0022, above its 0.0012 signal line, while the positive histogram has expanded to 0.0010. Chaikin Money Flow remains above zero at 0.11, which confirms that net capital has entered ADA during the recovery.

Daily indicators offer a less decisive picture. The Stochastic RSI has climbed to 81.38, above its signal line at 60.13, after rebounding from neutral territory. However, the reading has entered the overbought zone and could produce a short consolidation before another attempt at $0.18.

Cardano price daily chart — July 21 | Source: crypto.news ADX sits at only 15.24 on the daily chart. Such a low reading shows that ADA has not yet established a powerful directional trend despite the sharp intraday gain. A daily close above $0.18, followed by rising ADX, would give the rounding-bottom setup firmer confirmation.

Fibonacci levels drawn from the May peak at $0.2889 to the June low at $0.1388 place immediate support at the 78.6% retracement near $0.1709. The next major resistance rests at the 61.8% level of $0.1962, just below the rounding bottom’s $0.20 neckline. A breakout there could open $0.2139 and $0.2316.

Large holders had accumulated before the hard fork. Santiment data showed that wallets with 100,000 to 100 million ADA held 25.6 billion tokens, their largest balance since February 2023. Smaller wallets holding fewer than 100 ADA reduced their combined balance by about 0.7% over four months.

Derivatives traders also increased exposure before the upgrade. Cardano futures open interest rose from $385 million to $445 million between Monday and Thursday, while the funding rate turned positive at 0.0042%, according to CoinGlass data. Positive funding means long traders are paying shorts, though excessive leverage could increase liquidation risk.

The three-day liquidation heatmap places the nearest large short cluster between $0.179 and $0.180. A break through that area could force bearish positions to close and accelerate the move toward $0.196. Below the market, concentrated long liquidations sit near $0.172, $0.169, $0.165, and $0.160.

Cardano liquidation heatmap | Source: CoinGlass Global markets supplied another tailwind. South Korea’s Kospi gained 3.6%, Japan’s Nikkei rose 3.3%, and Taiwan’s Taiex advanced 4.2% as semiconductor shares recovered from last week’s sell-off, according to the Associated Press. Bitcoin’s return above $66,000 also directed fresh demand toward high-beta altcoins.

Loss of $0.169 would weaken the recovery setup Cardano’s bullish case depends first on the $0.170 Fibonacci level and the former breakout zone around $0.169. A daily close below that region would place ADA back inside its July range and expose the 4-hour rounding bottom to invalidation.

Further selling could pull the token toward $0.165, followed by $0.160 and the pattern floor near $0.155. A break below $0.155 would erase the sequence of higher lows, while the June bottom at $0.138 would become the next major support.

Cardano’s fundamentals still present a separate risk. DeFiLlama data places network total value locked near $86 million, far below the capital held by competing layer-1 networks. Van Rossem must lead to measurable growth in users, transactions, and locked capital for the upgrade’s price impact to last.

Security concerns have also returned after a Wanchain-linked Cardano bridge exploit drained about 515 million NIGHT tokens worth roughly $9 million, crypto.news reported. Although the incident did not compromise Cardano’s base layer, further ecosystem losses could hurt developer and investor confidence.

Oil prices and the U.S.-Iran conflict remain the primary macro threats. Renewed strikes or disruption around the Strait of Hormuz could lift energy costs, revive inflation fears, and reduce demand for speculative assets. Under those conditions, ADA could lose $0.169 before the rounding bottom reaches its $0.20 neckline.

Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.