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Intuitive Machines shares are sliding. What’s behind LUNR decline? What Is the NASA Contract Catalyst for LUNR?The company recently secured a NASA contract worth up to $148.3 million to deliver a production-line-qualified Nova-C lander to the Moon by 2028, supporting NASA’s accelerated lunar delivery schedule and expanded Moon Base operations under Artemis.

The firm-fixed-price award includes a $68.6 million base for mission execution plus a $79.7 million performance incentive tied to successful product-line qualification.

Short interest also rose to 37.84 million shares from 34.79 million, or 28.85% of the public float, with about 2.66 days to cover based on average daily volume of 14.23 million shares. That elevated short positioning can amplify day-to-day swings in either direction when news hits.

LUNR Technical Analysis: Key Levels to WatchFrom a longer-term trend perspective, Intuitive Machines is still up 58.47% over the past 12 months, but the current setup is heavy: the stock is trading below every major moving average tracked here, including the 200-day SMA at $18.91 and the 20-day SMA at $22.12. It’s also 40.1% below the 50-day SMA at $28.21, which tells you recent price action has been more "sell the bounce" than "buy the dip."

Momentum is best framed through MACD right now: MACD is below its signal line and the histogram is negative, which points to fading upside pressure unless buyers can reclaim that baseline. The bearish 20-day SMA below the 50-day SMA reinforces that near-term downtrend, even though the longer-term Golden Cross (50-day above 200-day) that formed in November 2025 is still technically intact.

Key Resistance: $19.50 — Nearby round-number area that sits just above the 200-day SMA zone, where rebounds can stall. Key Support: $16 — Nearby floor close to current price where buyers previously stepped in. Intuitive Machines is a space infrastructure and services company focused on enabling sustained human activity beyond Earth, designing and operating space systems across low Earth orbit, geostationary orbit, cislunar space and deep space. A big part of the story is "infrastructure-as-a-service," spanning spacecraft development and space-based network connectivity for commercial, civil, and national security customers.

That matters for this week’s NASA award because it fits the company’s push toward repeatable lunar logistics — moving from one-off missions toward a more standardized transport service. Management says it’s scaling manufacturing to support higher-volume production, which is the kind of operational shift that can change how investors think about backlog durability and execution risk.

LUNR Stock Price Action UpdateLUNR Stock Price Activity: Intuitive Machines shares closed Wednesday down 4.65% at $17.02, according to Benzinga Pro data.

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Uniswap just plugged Sky Ecosystem’s LitePSM directly into its routing engine, which means traders swapping between stablecoins like USDS, DAI, and USDC can now do so with zero slippage.

The integration is the latest piece of the “Stablecoin FX Layer” initiative, a collaboration between Spark, Uniswap, and Sky Ecosystem that launched in June 2026 with a clear goal: make stablecoin trading on-chain work more like traditional FX markets, where large swaps between pegged assets don’t move the price.

How LitePSM actually works Think of LitePSM as a vending machine for stablecoins. Instead of matching buyers and sellers in a liquidity pool, it maintains pre-minted pools of tokens that can be swapped at fixed rates. You put in USDS, you get USDC. No curve, no slippage, no drama.

In more technical terms, LitePSM is a gas-optimized evolution of MakerDAO’s original Peg Stability Module. The key innovation is that it bypasses direct interactions with the Vat, MakerDAO’s core accounting engine, which makes transactions cheaper and faster. Governance-set parameters like buf, tin, and tout control the module’s operations, regulating buffer sizes and fee structures.

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The module had already proven itself through integrations with other DeFi aggregators. CoW Swap, Paraswap, and Kyber were all routing trades through LitePSM before Uniswap came on board.

As part of the rollout, Spark migrated approximately $150 million in USDS liquidity to Uniswap v4 pools on June 25, 2026. This effectively establishes USDS as a central quoting asset for multi-issuer stablecoin trades, including pairs with USDT and PYUSD.

The numbers behind the expansion USDS circulation currently sits at approximately $10.3 billion. Sky’s governance has proposed doubling the USDC buffer for LitePSM from $400 million to $800 million.

That buffer is the war chest of USDC that LitePSM holds to facilitate instant swaps. When someone wants to convert USDS to USDC, the module draws from this buffer. Doubling it signals that demand for these swaps is outpacing the current infrastructure’s capacity.

The $150 million liquidity migration to Uniswap v4 positions USDS not just as another stablecoin competing for market share, but as a routing hub. When Uniswap’s algorithm looks for the best path to execute a trade between, say, USDT and PYUSD, it can now route through USDS via LitePSM, potentially offering better execution than traditional AMM pools.

What this means for traders and the broader market For regular users, the benefit is straightforward. Swapping between major stablecoins on Uniswap just got cheaper and more predictable. The routing engine will automatically detect when LitePSM offers a better rate than traditional pools and send the trade accordingly.

For larger players, institutional desks, DAOs managing treasuries, protocols rebalancing reserves, zero-slippage execution on stablecoin pairs at scale removes one of the persistent friction points that has kept some institutional volume on centralized exchanges.

The proposed buffer increase from $400 million to $800 million represents a significant capital commitment. At $10.3 billion in current circulation, the buffer would represent roughly 7.8% of outstanding USDS.

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

Solana is about to get significantly faster. The network’s upcoming Alpenglow upgrade, targeting a mainnet launch in the third quarter of 2026, promises to reduce transaction finality times from roughly 12.8 seconds down to 100-150 milliseconds.

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko confirmed in May 2026 that mainnet deployment is on track for Q3 2026, following successful testing on a community test cluster. The upgrade has been in the works since at least September 2025, when governance proposal SIMD-0326 passed with 98.27% approval from stakeholders, with roughly 52% of all staked tokens participating in the vote.

What Alpenglow actually changes The upgrade, led by Anza, an engineering team focused on Solana’s core infrastructure, replaces two of Solana’s most fundamental consensus mechanisms. Out go Proof of History and Tower Byzantine Fault Tolerance, the original technical pillars of the network. In their place come two new systems called Votor and Rotor.

One of the most consequential changes is the removal of on-chain vote transactions. Under the current system, validators continuously broadcast votes to the network as a form of consensus signaling. Those votes consume meaningful network resources. Eliminating them simplifies the network’s processing load and frees up capacity for actual user transactions.

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Alpenglow is currently live on a community test cluster and is expected to roll out under the Agave 4.1 client.

Why 150 milliseconds matters more than it sounds Human reaction time is roughly 200-250 milliseconds. A transaction settling in 100-150 milliseconds means Solana finalizes trades faster than a person can physically react to pressing a button.

High-frequency trading desks that operate on Solana currently have to build latency into their strategies to account for finality windows. Shrinking that window by roughly 100 times gives those operations far more room to work with, and makes Solana substantially more competitive with centralized exchanges that already operate at sub-second speeds.

DeFi protocols face a similar calculus. Liquidation engines, automated market makers, and oracle-dependent applications all perform better when the chain underneath them settles faster. Slower finality means wider safety margins have to be built into protocol design, which in turn means less capital efficiency for users. Faster finality allows protocols to tighten those margins without increasing risk.

Tokenized assets, whether they represent Treasury bills, equities, or real estate, require settlement reliability that mirrors or exceeds traditional finance infrastructure. A 150-millisecond finality window is a credible answer to institutional settlement requirements in a way that a 12.8-second window simply is not.

What investors should watch The governance vote passing with 98.27% approval is about as close to unanimous as blockchain governance gets. Contentious upgrades typically see significant dissent, lengthy forum debates, and sometimes competing forks. Alpenglow had none of that.

The removal of on-chain vote transactions is particularly worth monitoring. It streamlines validator operations and could reduce the cost of running a validator, which may affect the distribution and composition of the validator set over time. Staking mechanisms are preserved under the upgrade’s design, but the economics of validation shift when a major cost center is removed.

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

Key Takeaways QUBT acquired NHanced to expand U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and accelerate Fab 2 rollout. Quantum Computing secured a Planck Dynamics deal for five NeuraWave systems, with 2026 delivery expected. QUBT is broadening its quantum portfolio through manufacturing expansion and edge AI initiatives. Quantum Computing Inc. (QUBT - Free Report) or "QCi" has pursued several strategic initiatives to strengthen its manufacturing capabilities and broaden its quantum technology portfolio. The company acquired NHanced Semiconductors, Inc. (NHanced), for a combination of cash and QCi stock valued at $73.1 million, subject to customary adjustments and up to an additional $72.0 million if certain performance targets are achieved. 

This acquisition marks a significant step in QCi's strategy to build a stronger domestic semiconductor manufacturing base. The acquisition builds on the successful launch of Fab 1 in Tempe, AZ, and accelerates the rollout of Fab 2, allowing the company to scale its manufacturing capacity years ahead of its original plan.

Also, photonic reservoir computing has emerged as an important computing architecture for edge AI, enabling efficient processing of data directly at the point of generation. Driven by this demand, QCi recently received a purchase order and entered into a framework agreement with Planck Dynamics to deploy QCi’s NeuraWave photonic reservoir computer as a foundational platform for next-generation AI applications. Under the terms of the agreement, QCi received an initial purchase order for five NeuraWave systems, with delivery expected during 2026. 

Peer UpdateD-Wave Quantum Inc. (QBTS - Free Report) announced its forthcoming gate-model quantum computing simulator, which is expected to be the first of its kind designed for error-aware programming. QBTS continues to advance its annealing platform through Advantage2 and the Leap cloud service. 

Rigetti Computing, Inc. (RGTI - Free Report) announced that it has signed a letter of intent (LOI) with the U.S. Department of Commerce for an award of up to $100 million in funding over three years to accelerate superconducting quantum computing R&D. Rigetti achieved a two-qubit gate fidelity as high as 99.9% at 28-nanosecond gate speed on a prototype platform using its new proprietary adiabatic CZ scheme.

QUBT’s Share Price PerformanceOver the past year, QCi’s shares have plunged 55.1% compared with the industry’s 16.3% decline. 

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

QUBT’s Expensive ValuationQUBT currently trades at a forward 12-month price-to-sales (P/S) of 71.25X compared with the industry’s median of 5.25X.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

QUBT Stock Estimate TrendIn the past 30 days, QCi’s loss per share estimate for 2026 has remained unchanged at 14 cents. 

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

QUBT currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

A long-standing member of the Shiba Inu community, known as Mazrael, has issued a renewed warning to SHIB users regarding obsolete domain names associated with the ecosystem. According to his latest statement, these addresses—no longer managed by the project—should not be considered official access points for Shiba Inu services.

Shib.io now the official portalMazrael emphasized that Shib.io serves as the core portal for the Shiba Inu ecosystem, including ShibaSwap and Shibarium. He urged users to rely solely on this address and to carefully verify all official links for security reasons before interacting with the ecosystem or its products.

Glossary: Shibarium is a layer-2 blockchain network developed for the Shiba Inu ecosystem. ShibaSwap is the ecosystem’s decentralized trading application.

This warning extends beyond general ecosystem addresses. Mazrael also reminded the community about the domain name previously associated with the Shib The Metaverse virtual world project, clarifying its current status and management.

Shib The Metaverse domain no longer managed by projectAccording to Mazrael, the domain name tied to the Shib The Metaverse project is no longer owned or administered by the Shiba Inu core team. He cautioned that this address could potentially be purchased by third parties in the future, or repurposed for entirely different objectives.

For your safety, do not assume that any future content appearing at this domain is affiliated with the SHIB ecosystem.

This warning points to the risks of interacting with apparently official websites that are no longer connected to the project. Particularly after the decommissioning of older domain names, users are encouraged not to use these addresses for accessing official Shiba Inu services.

Verification urged before connecting walletsMazrael also noted that if Shib The Metaverse is relaunched, access is expected to be provided through Shib.io, rather than via an independent domain. This approach aims to centralize all official connections under a single, verified platform within the SHIB ecosystem.

When Shib The Metaverse becomes available again, access is expected to be through Shib.io, not any separate domain name.

His message to the community stressed the importance of double-checking links before connecting wallets, confirming transactions, or entering sensitive information. The risk remains particularly high that unofficial sites may emerge after old domains are decommissioned, targeting unsuspecting users.

Originating as a meme coin, Shiba Inu has grown over time into a larger crypto ecosystem, bringing together components like ShibaSwap, Shibarium, and metaverse initiatives. The latest warning is intended to clarify the project’s official access channels and reinforce user security.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

Key Takeaways CBRS is pitching wafer-scale AI chips as a faster alternative to conventional GPU-based systems.Cerebras' core cloud and services revenues rose 167% year over year to $79.8 million in Q1 2026.CBRS faces concentration risk, strict OpenAI delivery obligations and near-term margin compression. Cerebras Systems (CBRS - Free Report) has built its investment story around a sharp break from conventional AI chip design. The company’s wafer-scale approach gives investors a clear growth narrative, but also a clear test.

The question is whether Cerebras can turn speed, partner demand and cloud adoption into durable scale without letting delivery obligations, margins and data-center constraints overwhelm the story.

How CBRS Built a Different AI ArchitectureCerebras’ Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE) is designed to reduce a core bottleneck in AI computing: moving data across many smaller chips. By keeping compute and memory on a single wafer, the architecture aims to lower latency and simplify large-model workloads.

The WSE-3 includes roughly 4 trillion transistors, 900,000 AI-optimized cores, 44 gigabytes of on-chip memory, 21 petabytes per second of memory bandwidth and 214 petabits per second of fabric bandwidth. Those specifications support the company’s argument that wafer-scale design can deliver faster training and inference than conventional GPU-based systems.

That matters in a market where NVIDIA (NVDA - Free Report) remains central to GPU-accelerated computing and data-center platforms. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD - Free Report) also competes in high-performance computing, graphics and data-center markets, keeping the AI accelerator landscape highly contested.

NVIDIA is dominating the AI GPU market through its Blackwell, Hopper, DGX/NVL systems that are used for AI training and inference. AMD’s MI300 and MI350 accelerator families are competing with CBRS in hyperscale AI infrastructure and enterprise AI clusters.

In the past month, CBRS shares have dropped 19.2%, underperforming NVIDIA’s fall of 3.8% and AMD’s appreciation of 7.4%.

CBRS Stock Price Performance
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Cerebras Turns Hardware Into a PlatformCerebras is not selling only processors. Its portfolio includes CS-3 AI supercomputers, networking infrastructure, cluster management software and cloud-based AI services.

The software layer is central to that platform push. CSoft maps PyTorch models to the WSE without requiring developers to rewrite code, while the Inference Serving Stack and Cluster Manager help customers use multiple CS-3 systems as a single logical computer.

The mix shift is already visible. In the first quarter of 2026, core revenues rose 92% year over year to $191.3 million, with core cloud and services revenues up 167% to $79.8 million. That cloud growth changes the investment debate. The story is increasingly about recurring infrastructure usage and higher platform utilization, not just one-time system sales.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2026 and 2027 revenues is currently pegged at $861.3 million and $2.77 billion, respectively.

Why Expanding Partner Base Matter for CerebrasCBRS’ partnerships with OpenAI and Amazon (AMZN - Free Report) are noteworthy developments.

OpenAI is the biggest validation point for Cerebras’ speed positioning. The company has an agreement for 750 megawatts of high-speed inference compute over the next several years, valued at more than $20 billion. The relationship also gives Cerebras exposure to frontier-model workloads. Management has said the collaboration gives the company direct insight into where advanced model development is moving.

Amazon’s cloud-arm Amazon Web Services (AWS) adds a distribution angle. The partnership is intended to bring Cerebras systems into AWS data centers and combine AWS Trainium 3 for prefill with Cerebras CS-3 for decoding.

For investors, that matters because AWS can place Cerebras closer to enterprises already running workloads inside Amazon’s cloud ecosystem. The opportunity depends on deployment execution, not just partnership headlines.

CBRS Growth Comes With Real ConstraintsCerebras’ growth case carries meaningful concentration risk. Historically, G42 and MBZUAI accounted for most annual revenues, while OpenAI is expected to represent a substantial portion of future revenues.

The OpenAI agreement also comes with strict delivery obligations across multiple data centers. If Cerebras misses deployment milestones, OpenAI can terminate portions of the agreement.

Margins are another pressure point. Cerebras expects near-term gross margin compression as it rents systems and builds the infrastructure needed to serve cloud demand. This is expected to hurt profitability. The consensus mark for 2026 loss is currently pegged at 89 cents per share. However, for 2027, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings is pegged at 96 cents per share.

Data-center availability is a practical constraint as well. Management has described capacity as difficult to secure, even as the company expands across the United States, Canada, Europe and other regions.

ConclusionThe bottom line is balanced. Cerebras offers direct exposure to fast-growing AI infrastructure demand, but the stock’s outlook depends on whether the company can scale capacity, meet major customer obligations and improve profitability over time.

CBRS currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

The logo of Meta at the Meta Lab in Los Angeles, California, U.S., May 20, 2026. REUTERS/Daniel Cole/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

SummaryCompaniesAlberta pitched cheap gas and cooler temperatures as key advantages1 gigawatt facility is Meta's 33rd globallyData center will be built in Sturgeon County in central AlbertaCALGARY, July 8 (Reuters) - Tech giant Meta announced ​Wednesday it will build a massive data center in central Alberta, the company's first ‌in Canada, as it rapidly builds out computing capacity to support the global AI boom.

The 1-gigawatt data center will be located in Sturgeon County and represents a total investment of C$13 billion, or $9.17 billion, Meta said.

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Meta has doubled down ​on AI, pledging hundreds of billions of dollars to build large AI data centers in the U.S. ​The Alberta announcement represents the company's 33rd data center globally.

Executives made the announcement ⁠in Calgary alongside Premier Danielle Smith and other Alberta government officials, who have spent several years courting Silicon ​Valley tech giants with the aim of spurring a large-scale investment in the oil-and-gas province.

Meta, like other ​tech giants, is facing rapidly expanding power needs due to the growth of AI, and Alberta is rich in natural gas which sells at a significant discount to the U.S. benchmark.

The province's cold climate also makes cooling the massive super-computers ​and related data center infrastructure more cost-efficient.

The 20 existing small- to mid-scale data centers in Alberta ​already pull from the province's energy grid, which is 60% powered by natural gas. The provincial government is giving new ‌proponents ⁠the option to build their own power sources to avoid limits on power capacity.

Meta said Wednesday it will fully fund new generation and grid infrastructure for its Alberta data center, which will consume about as much electricity as 800,000 homes.

The company has partnered with Alberta-based Pembina Pipeline, which announced last week it will ​go ahead with its ​Greenlight Electricity Centre, a ⁠new natural gas-fired power-generation facility in Sturgeon County which will be in service in late 2030 and with which Meta has a long-term tolling agreement.

The project ​will require approximately 150 million cubic feet per day of natural gas, according ​to Pembina, ⁠helping to create demand for Western Canadian natural gas producers.

Canada's government laid out an AI strategy last month that suggested new data center growth would benefit from the country's clean electricity grid, which is largely powered by renewables ⁠and low-emission ​power sources.

But the vast majority of data centers currently in ​the planning stages in Canada are located in Alberta, where a reliance on natural gas means the emissions intensity of the ​province's electricity grid is almost five times the national average.

Reporting by Amanda Stephenson in Calgary Editing by Nick Zieminski

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Delta Air Lines Inc (NYSE:DAL) is expected to report second-quarter results slightly above the upper end of its previously guided earnings range, though investors are likely to focus more closely on the airline's outlook for the third quarter and full year, according to UBS.

The brokerage said it expects Delta to report second-quarter earnings slightly above the high end of its guidance range of $1 to $1.50 per share, in line with broader market expectations.

"Importantly, we think its forward outlook will be the key focus on the print," the analysts wrote.

For the third quarter, UBS said investors are generally expecting earnings guidance of $2 to $2.50 per share on mid-teens revenue growth. UBS forecasts third-quarter earnings of $2.51 per share, compared with Wall Street consensus of $2.03.

The analysts added that Delta is likely to take a conservative approach to its fuel assumptions for the third and fourth quarters given that oil prices have moved higher.

On costs, UBS said the market generally expects second-quarter non-fuel unit costs, or CASM excluding fuel, to increase more than 7% year over year. Delta had previously indicated that second-quarter CASM-ex growth would be broadly in line with the 6.3% increase recorded in the first quarter, but UBS believes crew scheduling issues were likely more severe than expected and may have increased cost pressures.

For the third quarter, the firm expects CASM-ex growth of 6% to 7%, with crew scheduling disruptions likely to persist but be less of a drag than in the second quarter.

UBS also noted that Delta's refinery operations are expected to contribute a benefit of about $0.10 to $0.15 per share in the third quarter at most, although profits could be lower following the recent fire at the company's Monroe refinery.

Looking ahead to fiscal 2026, UBS said investor expectations for Delta's full-year guidance vary following the stock's roughly 28% gain year to date. The brokerage believes the market is looking for earnings guidance in the range of $6 to $7 per share, compared with its own estimate of $6.70 and the Wall Street consensus of $5.99.

That compares with Delta's initial fiscal 2026 guidance of $6.50 to $7.50 per share issued in January.

UBS noted that achieving the lower end of that original range would imply fourth-quarter earnings of about $2.00 per share, assuming third-quarter earnings are around the midpoint of the expected $2 to $2.50 range.

The analysts cautioned that maintaining the original guidance range would require fourth quarter revenue growth to remain consistent with the third quarter despite tougher year-over-year comparisons and the possibility of weaker consumer demand.

"While its possible DAL guides to this range, we think one has to assume Q4 revenue growth remains consistent with 3Q despite tougher compares and possibility of greater consumer elasticity kicking in by then,” the analysts wrote.

“In our view, that's a bit optimistic, notwithstanding some modest benefit from greater portion of booking curve exposed to fare increases in Q4 versus Q3.”

UBS maintained its ‘Buy’ rating on Delta Air Lines with an unchanged price target of $107, implying upside from current levels of $87.

Exxon Mobil logo and stock graph are seen through a magnifier displayed in this illustration taken September 4, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

CompaniesLAGOS, July 8 (Reuters) - ExxonMobil (XOM.N), opens new tab and its partners will invest $1 billion in the Usan ​Infill Project offshore Nigeria, a development expected ‌to add 40,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil production, Nigeria's upstream regulator said on Wednesday.

The Nigerian Upstream ​Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) said the investment ​marks a return to drilling activity by ⁠ExxonMobil affiliate Esso Exploration and Production Nigeria ​in the country, with the company's last drilling ​operation dating back to 2016.

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ExxonMobil's Nigerian affiliate, Esso Exploration and Production Nigeria, operates OML 138, which contains ​the Usan field under a production-sharing contract ​with NNPC Ltd.

ExxonMobil Nigeria Managing Director Jagir Baxi confirmed the ‌investment ⁠commitment at an oil conference in Abuja.

NUPRC Chief Executive Oritsemyiwa Eyesan said the Usan project is expected to deliver first production within ​18 months ​after seismic ⁠data identified the investment opportunity.

Nigeria is seeking to attract new upstream ​investment and raise crude oil production ​through ⁠development of offshore and onshore assets.

Separately, NUPRC presented 19 prospecting licences across deepwater, shallow-water and continental ⁠shelf ​acreage to successful bidders ​from the 2022/2023 Mini Bid Round and the 2024 Licensing ​Round.

Reporting by Isaac Anyaogu; Editing by Will Dunham

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Since the start of the AI boom in 2023, there have been several moments where the narrative around the buildout and long-term potential of this emerging technology has swung sharply from exuberance to doubt. Over the last few weeks, we appear to have entered another one of those doubt phases.

But it is important not to lose sight of how far this theme has come, not just over the last three years, but even over the last three months. In April, equities looked like they were entering a broader correction as geopolitical tensions flared and risk appetite deteriorated. Yet just weeks later, stocks found their footing and rallied aggressively.

That move was led by technology, AI-adjacent stocks, and, most notably, semiconductors. The SOXX semiconductor ETF more than doubled from those lows, while some of the biggest winners in the group, such as Micron Technology ((MU - Free Report) ), rallied more than 300% from depressed levels.

That kind of move naturally invites a reset.

Image Source: TradingView

The “Narrative Pendulum” is a concept I picked up from analyst Alex Barrow, and I think it is a useful framework for understanding this market (detailed here). The basic idea is that even when a powerful secular trend remains intact, the market’s perception of that trend can swing dramatically between extremes. In the case of AI, investors move from believing the opportunity is nearly unlimited to worrying that the entire buildout is excessive, wasteful, or unlikely to generate adequate returns.

That is where we are now. Concerns around overspending, capital misallocation, falling LLM costs, hyperscaler margins, and the ultimate return on invested capital are beginning to weigh on the AI trade. These concerns are not necessarily fatal to the long-term thesis. In fact, they are probably healthy. Periods of doubt help cool the kind of speculative enthusiasm that can drive prices almost straight higher and create a more durable base for the next leg of the cycle.

I continue to believe the AI boom has room to run, but a pause or correction here would not be surprising.

That brings me to Qualcomm ((QCOM - Free Report) ), a major player in the semiconductor industry that, until recently, has been best known as the dominant force in mobile chips. That remains a core business for the company, but smartphones are now a mature market. As a result, Qualcomm has increasingly been viewed as a slower-growth, more cyclical, and somewhat commoditized semiconductor company, not unlike how Micron was viewed in the memory space a little over a year ago.

That perception may now be changing.

A couple of weeks ago, at the company’s investor day event, Qualcomm management announced a significant pivot in the company’s strategic direction. While the company had been hinting at a larger role in AI over the last several months, the investor day made that shift far more explicit. Management unveiled a broader slate of AI-related business verticals, major hyperscaler relationships, and a much more ambitious vision for Qualcomm’s role in the AI infrastructure stack.

The key takeaway is that Qualcomm is not simply trying to enter the AI sector with one product. It is trying to position itself as a broader AI infrastructure platform.

That could include chips, connectivity, edge AI, inference capabilities, custom silicon opportunities, and data center acceleration. In other words, Qualcomm appears to be moving from being primarily viewed as a mobile-chip company to something closer to an “AI factory accelerator” — a company that helps hyperscalers and enterprise customers build, connect, optimize, and scale the infrastructure required for AI workloads.

I have many thoughts on this evolution, which I will detail more fully, but the timing of the announcement has been somewhat unfortunate in the short to medium term. Qualcomm unveiled this strategic pivot just as the semiconductor narrative began to swing from exuberance back toward skepticism. The stock initially reacted strongly to the news, but has since faded to multi-month lows.

In my view, that weakness has less to do with Qualcomm’s specific developments and more to do with the broader industry pullback. The market is currently questioning the entire AI infrastructure trade, and Qualcomm is being dragged into that reset despite potentially having just laid out one of the more important strategic transitions in its recent history.

If Qualcomm can successfully execute on this pivot, the stock may no longer deserve to trade primarily as a mature mobile-chip company. Instead, investors may begin to revalue it as a broader AI infrastructure beneficiary with exposure to hyperscalers, edge AI, data center acceleration, and next-generation compute demand.

The timing may be unfortunate, but the setup is becoming increasingly interesting.

Scope of Qualcomm’s EndeavorsThe financial targets alone show how ambitious Qualcomm’s AI pivot has become. Management is targeting $5 billion in data center revenue by fiscal 2027 and $15 billion by fiscal 2029, with the early ramp expected to come largely from custom silicon and connectivity before the company’s accelerators and server CPUs become bigger contributors.

That is a major shift for a company still mostly viewed through the lens of smartphones.

At the center of the strategy is Qualcomm Dragonfly, the company’s new data center platform. Dragonfly is not one product, but a layered portfolio that includes connectivity silicon from the Alphawave acquisition, custom silicon for hyperscalers, AI inference accelerators, and eventually Oryon-based server CPUs. In the data center, Qualcomm expects the sequence to begin with connectivity, move into custom silicon in early fiscal 2027, then AI accelerators in the second half of fiscal 2027, followed by Oryon server CPUs in fiscal 2028.

The strategic logic is built around a major shift in AI workloads. The first phase of the AI boom was dominated by training large models, where Nvidia’s GPUs and CUDA software stack remain the standard. But the next phase may be increasingly driven by inference, especially as agentic AI systems begin chaining together dozens of model calls to complete more complex tasks. That dramatically increases the number of inference requests and makes power efficiency, memory bandwidth and cost per token far more important.

This is where Qualcomm believes it has an opening.

The company’s most important technical announcement was High-Bandwidth Compute, or HBC. Rather than relying on the traditional model of pairing accelerators with stacks of high-bandwidth memory, Qualcomm is pursuing a “memory first” architecture that places compute more directly beneath the memory stack. The goal is to reduce the distance data has to travel, improve efficiency, lower power consumption and address one of the biggest bottlenecks in AI inference.

Just as important is the software announcement. Qualcomm’s acquisition of Modular may be the key to making the whole strategy work. Hardware adoption in AI is heavily dependent on the developer ecosystem, and Nvidia’s CUDA moat has made it difficult for competitors to gain meaningful share. Cristiano Amon has framed the Modular acquisition as a potential Android or Linux moment for AI infrastructure, where a more open, hardware-agnostic software layer could reduce dependence on any single vendor.

That is a powerful idea. Rather than asking customers to abandon Nvidia overnight, Qualcomm can offer a software platform that runs across Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm silicon, while still creating a natural path toward its own accelerators over time. If it works, Modular gives Qualcomm a much more credible way to enter the AI infrastructure market than hardware alone.

The company also added customer validation to the roadmap. Microsoft is expected to deploy Qualcomm’s HBC technology in Azure, while Meta has committed to a multigenerational agreement for Qualcomm CPUs in its data centers. Qualcomm also reinforced the software story through a partnership with Hugging Face, giving developers a path to deploy open models across Qualcomm platforms.

Finally, Qualcomm’s connectivity expertise may be one of its most underappreciated advantages. AI data centers are increasingly constrained not only by compute and memory, but by the ability to move massive amounts of data across racks and clusters. Through Alphawave, Qualcomm now has high-speed connectivity assets that are already generating revenue, giving Dragonfly a current revenue stream while the broader AI platform develops.

Execution risk remains significant. Qualcomm is entering a crowded market with powerful incumbents, and several of the most important products will not reach commercial scale until fiscal 2027 or fiscal 2028. But the scope of the announcement is hard to dismiss. Qualcomm is not simply adding AI exposure. It is attempting to build a full data center platform around the economics of inference, where power efficiency, memory bandwidth, custom silicon, software openness and connectivity may become increasingly important competitive advantages.

Image Source: Qualcomm

Qualcomm’s Auto Execution ExtrapolatedFull disclosure, going into Qualcomm’s Investor Day, I had my doubts about the company’s foray into the AI data center buildout.

The technical capability was never really the question. Qualcomm has long been one of the most sophisticated chip designers in the world, with deep expertise in power efficiency, connectivity, system integration and edge computing. The bigger question was whether the company was simply too late. In a market already dominated by Nvidia, increasingly targeted by AMD and aggressively pursued by hyperscalers’ own internal silicon teams, it was fair to wonder whether Qualcomm could carve out a meaningful position.

But the more I look at the strategy, the more compelling it becomes.

Qualcomm is not making a single bet on one AI chip. It is taking a multi-pronged approach across connectivity, custom silicon, AI inference accelerators, server CPUs and software. That gives the company multiple ways to win. Some pieces of the portfolio may lag expectations, and that would not be surprising given the scale of the undertaking. But if even one or two segments meaningfully outperform, the overall opportunity could still become material.

I view the entire project almost as a strategic experiment. Qualcomm is putting several products into the market, testing where hyperscaler demand is strongest, and positioning itself around the areas where AI infrastructure is most likely to evolve next. Management may not describe it that way explicitly, but I think it is the right approach. The AI data center market is still young, and the economics are changing quickly. Rather than trying to predict the entire future with one product, Qualcomm is building a platform broad enough to adapt as the market develops.

That approach becomes more credible when viewed through the lens of Qualcomm’s recent success in automotive.

News from the automotive segment can get lost when management is announcing something as exciting as AI data center infrastructure, but the execution there may be the best model for what Qualcomm is trying to do now. The automotive business did not emerge overnight. Qualcomm entered through connectivity, expanded into the digital cockpit, and then moved deeper into advanced driver assistance and broader vehicle compute.

That layered strategy has worked. Automotive has quickly grown into one of Qualcomm’s most important non-handset businesses, crossing a $5 billion annualized revenue run rate in fiscal Q2 2026, with management expecting to exit fiscal 2026 above a $6 billion run rate. That is no longer a side project. It is becoming a real business line and a meaningful proof point for Qualcomm’s diversification strategy.

The parallel to AI infrastructure is important. In automotive, Qualcomm did not need to own the entire car to create value. It needed to identify the parts of the vehicle where compute, connectivity and software were becoming more important, then expand its content over time. In data centers, the same logic may apply. Qualcomm does not need to displace Nvidia across the full AI stack to succeed. It needs to find the areas where its advantages matter most.

That is why the inference-first focus is so important. Qualcomm is not trying to win yesterday’s AI infrastructure battle. It is trying to position itself for the next phase of the market, where power efficiency, memory bandwidth, connectivity and cost per token become more important as AI workloads scale from training into large-scale inference. Those are exactly the types of engineering problems Qualcomm has spent decades solving.

This does not eliminate execution risk. The data center market is larger, faster moving and more competitive than automotive. Nvidia’s ecosystem is entrenched, hyperscalers are increasingly building their own chips, and Qualcomm still has to prove that its roadmap can translate into commercial deployments at scale.

But automotive shows that Qualcomm can execute this type of transition. It can move beyond handsets, build a platform in an adjacent market, expand its content over time and convert long design cycles into meaningful revenue. That does not guarantee success in AI infrastructure, but it makes the plan far easier to take seriously.

For investors, that may be the key point. Qualcomm’s AI data center strategy should not be judged only as a late attempt to chase Nvidia. It should be viewed as the next test of the same diversification playbook that is already working in automotive. If the company can repeat even part of that success, the market may be underestimating how different Qualcomm’s business could look over the next several years.

Qualcomm Stock Breaks DownThe technical picture in QCOM stock offers a more tactical view of the setup.

Back in May, the stock rerated significantly higher after the company teased a major hyperscaler deal. From there, it built out a broad consolidation pattern, but since the full announcement, the stock has traded lower. Over the last week, QCOM broke below a key level of support, mirroring the broader weakness across the semiconductor sector.

Technical analysis does not provide reliable forecasting ability on its own, but it can show where large orders have left footprints. That is essentially what a “level” represents: an area where a meaningful amount of shares have changed hands and where buyers or sellers have previously shown up.

For now, QCOM remains below that breakdown level, and the near-term downtrend appears intact. That makes the stock more difficult for traders looking for a clean short-term entry. But at roughly 17x forward earnings, and with a potentially much larger long-term AI infrastructure opportunity beginning to take shape, the setup may be more attractive for investors looking for a bigger multi-year win rather than traders trying to capture the next short-term move.

The earnings revision picture may also supports a more patient view. Qualcomm currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), reflecting earnings estimates that have been relatively flat. That means analysts are not aggressively raising expectations yet, but they also are not cutting estimates in a meaningful way. In the context of a major strategic pivot, that leaves room for upside if management begins converting these announcements into visible revenue opportunities.

If revisions start to move higher, that could become an important bullish catalyst. A pickup in estimate momentum would signal that analysts are beginning to underwrite the AI data center opportunity more directly into their models, rather than treating it as a longer-dated optionality story.

Ultimately, the next major move in QCOM stock appears heavily tied to the broader semiconductor cycle. There may still be downside ahead over the next month if the group continues to unwind. But when the narrative pendulum finally bottoms and the market begins to lift the AI infrastructure theme again, Qualcomm could emerge with a much stronger story than it had in prior cycles.

The stock has broken down technically, but the business may be breaking out strategically.

Image Source: TradingView

Bottom Line on Qualcomm StockQualcomm’s AI data center strategy is still early, and execution risk remains high. The company is entering a crowded market, several key products are still years from scale, and the stock remains caught in the broader semiconductor pullback.

But the announcement changes the long-term story. Qualcomm is no longer just a mature mobile-chip company looking for incremental growth. It is attempting to build a broader AI infrastructure platform across inference, connectivity, custom silicon, software and power-efficient compute.

For now, the technical setup is weak and earnings revisions remain flat, which supports the Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). But that also leaves room for upside if analysts begin raising estimates as AI data center revenue becomes more visible.

In the near term, QCOM may still trade with the broader semiconductor group. Over the next several years, however, the bigger question is whether Qualcomm can turn this roadmap into a real second growth engine.

The stock is not without risk, but the setup is becoming much more interesting.

© courtesy of Tulane Public Relations

On CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, Jim Cramer made a call that resonated across chip and cloud names: the tech tape is bouncing. And that Oracle may be the most interesting contrarian setup in the group. Alongside Carl Quintanilla and David Faber, Cramer framed Monday’s rally as “revenge of that” Friday selloff, arguing “we’re seeing a lot of people who are saying, look, it’s time to go back in the group.”

The rebound is playing out against a backdrop of extraordinary data center capital spending, and Cramer’s questions center on whether the buildout will pay off for anyone other than the model developers.

Oracle: A Losing Streak Meets a Buildout Thesis Oracle (NYSE: ORCL | ORCL Price Prediction) has been the pain trade of the summer. Shares traded at $142.50 as of Monday morning, after falling 42.32% over the past month from a June 2 close of $244.58.

Cramer zeroed in on the fundamental question behind that drawdown: “The Stargate data center in Saline Township that I visited cost $16 billion to build and another $30 to $35 billion, largely from Oracle, to outfit it. Are they going to get the return on that?” He noted that recent big layoffs and share losses might actually flag “the screaming buy of the group”, adding that even skeptical sources have started warming to the setup.

The numbers behind the buildout are substantial. In Oracle’s Q4 FY2025 report, cloud infrastructure revenue jumped to $5.79 billion, up 93% year over year. Remaining Performance Obligations reached $638 billion, a 363% year-over-year increase, with $75 billion tied to prepaid or customer-supplied GPU arrangements. Management reaffirmed its FY2027 revenue target of $90 billion, guided Q1 FY2027 cloud revenue growth of 58% to 64%, and raised its FY2027 non-GAAP EPS target to $8.05. Free cash flow was negative $23.7 billion against $55.7 billion in capital expenditures, and the company plans to raise roughly $40 billion through debt and equity in FY2027 to fund the expansion.

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NVIDIA Confirms the Scale of the Buildout Cramer’s paradox—”Shouldn’t we see some profits in compute for somebody other than the much-loved Anthropic?”—hits at the top of the chain. NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) reported Q1 FY2027 revenue of $81.61 billion, up 85.2% year over year, with Data Center revenue of $75.25 billion, up 92% year over year. Non-GAAP EPS of $1.87 beat consensus estimates, and guidance for the next quarter called for $91 billion in revenue at a 75.0% gross margin.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) raised its 2026 capital expenditure (capex) guidance to $125 billion–$145 billion, up from its prior range of $115 billion–$135 billion, citing higher component pricing and, to a lesser extent, additional data center costs. Q1 FY2026 revenue was $56.31 billion, up 33% year over year, while diluted EPS came in at $10.44, including an $8.03 billion income tax benefit.

What to Watch The Cramer thesis puts Oracle at the center of the return-on-buildout debate. With remaining performance obligation (RPO) backlog visibility, a $90 billion FY27 revenue target, and hyperscaler-grade contracts already booked, the question moves from demand to execution. Investors will look for progress on escalator clauses, tenant payoff timelines, and whether Oracle’s Stargate outfitting spend converts into the multi-year cloud margin story management has promised.

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Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

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$29 billion. That is what guests booked through Airbnb (NASDAQ:ABNB | ABNB Price Prediction) in a single quarter. Indeed, any time investors see gross bookings surge 19% year over year in a given quarter, that’s a big move.

At that pace, the company’s trailing platform volume now approaches the $90 billion mark annualized. This figure has become shorthand for the company’s growth story, and was disclosed on the Q1 2026 conference call held by CEO Brian Chesky and CFO Ellie Mertz.

What It Means Gross booking value is the money flowing across the platform before Airbnb takes its cut. Scale on that base is why the top line moves the way it does. The company’s Q1 revenue landed at $2.7 billion, up 18% year over year, beating the high end of prior guidance by two points. Impressively, nights and seats booked rose 9% against a roughly 100 basis point headwind tied to the Middle East conflict, while Airbnb’s average daily rate rose 9%.

The engagement mix explains the acceleration. App bookings reached 63% of total nights, up from 58% a year earlier, and grew 22%. First time bookers grew 10%, the fastest rate since 2022. Reserve Now, Pay Later already accounts for roughly 20% of global GBV after only a few quarters of global rollout.

I think one of the most underrated and overlooked fundamentals is Airbnb’s performance in emerging markets. India origin nights are up around 50% year over year, and Brazil is compounding at over 20%. This is the mechanism behind the $29 billion print.

With profitability moving alongside volume (adjusted EBITDA reached $519 million, up 24%), there’s a lot to like about where Airbnb is headed form here. I think the company’s trailing twelve month free cash flow of $4.5 billion at a 36% margin is also critical to point out at this stage of the company’s growth trajectory.

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Bull Case Airbnb raised its full year 2026 outlook to low to mid teens revenue growth with an adjusted EBITDA margin of at least 35%. That makes sense to me, given the company’s Q2 guidance calls for $3.54 billion to $3.6 billion in revenue, or 14% to 16% year over year. Mertz was direct about the setup: “Underlying demand is strong. Our product improvements are working. Our monetization initiatives are gaining traction.”

Capital return backs the growth story. Airbnb repurchased $1.1 billion of Class A stock in Q1, has $4.5 billion remaining on its authorization, and has bought back $14.8 billion total since Q3 2022, taking the fully diluted count down roughly 9%. The Winter Olympics in Milan drew around 200,000 guests with supply in host markets up roughly 30% and GBV that more than tripled. The 2026 FIFA World Cup, which management calls the largest event in Airbnb history, already has 100,000+ new homes listed across 16 host cities.

Efficiency is the other pillar. Roughly 60% of engineering code is AI co-authored, and Chesky argues that “Airbnb has to move at the speed of AI.” Polymarket traders assign an 84% probability the stock hits $152 in July, and a 49% probability of $160. The analyst consensus price target sits at $156.74.

Bottom Line At a 27 forward earnings multiple on a company throwing off $4.5 billion in trailing free cash flow, the growth flywheel is visible in the numbers. Consumer sentiment has weakened to 44.8 in May 2026, and Q1 EPS of $0.26 missed the $0.31 estimate on a $70 million one time CAMT tax charge. Yet booking volumes, guidance, and capital return are moving in one direction. The forward catalyst is the World Cup activation across 16 cities in three countries. If the growth story is peaking, $29 billion in a single quarter is a strange way to show it.

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Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

July 08, 2026 16:15 ET  | Source: APA Corporation

HOUSTON, July 08, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- APA Corporation (Nasdaq: APA) today provided supplemental information regarding certain second-quarter 2026 financial and operational results. This information is intended only to provide additional information regarding current estimates management believes will affect results for the second quarter of 2026. It is provided to assist investors, analysts and others in formulating their own estimates and is not intended to be a comprehensive presentation of all factors that will affect second-quarter 2026 results. Actual results and the impact of factors identified here may vary and are subject to finalization of the financial reporting process for the second quarter of 2026.

Estimated Average Realized Prices – 2Q26 Oil (bbl)NGL (bbl)Natural Gas (Mcf)United States$93.20$25.10($2.20)International$99.90$73.40$4.80 Egypt tax barrels:36 MBoe/dDry hole costs (before tax):$41 millionNet gain on oil and gas purchases and sales (before tax)*:$345 million *Includes $109 million realized loss from commodity derivatives

Production update

APA curtailed approximately 137 MMcf/d of U.S. natural gas production and 12,300 barrels per day of U.S. natural gas liquids production in the second quarter in response to weak or negative Waha hub prices.

Weighted-average shares outstanding

The estimated weighted-average basic common shares for the second quarter are 353 million. APA repurchased 2.8 million shares at an average price of $35.25 per share during the second quarter.

General and administrative

During the second quarter, APA incurred general and administrative expenses totaling $65 million. This includes approximately $10 million in stock-based compensation, reflecting the mark-to-market impacts of APA’s share price during the quarter.

Second-quarter 2026 earnings call

APA will host a conference call to discuss its second-quarter 2026 results at 10 a.m. Central time, Thursday, Aug. 6. The conference call will be webcast on APA’s website at www.apacorp.com and investor.apacorp.com. Following the conference call, a replay will be available for one year on the “Investors” page of the company’s website.

About APA

APA Corporation owns consolidated subsidiaries that explore for and produce oil and natural gas in the United States, Egypt and the United Kingdom and that explore for oil and natural gas offshore Suriname and elsewhere. APA posts announcements, operational updates, investor information and press releases on its website, www.apacorp.com.

Forward-looking statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements can be identified by words such as “anticipates,” “intends,” “plans,” “seeks,” “believes,” “continues,” “could,” “estimates,” “expects,” “goals,” “guidance,” “may,” “might,” “outlook,” “possibly,” “potential,” “projects,” “prospects,” “should,” “will,” “would,” and similar references to future periods, but the absence of these words does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements about future plans, expectations, and objectives for operations, including statements about our capital plans, drilling plans, production expectations, asset sales, and monetizations. While forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and analyses made by us that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances, whether actual results and developments will meet our expectations and predictions depends on a number of risks and uncertainties which could cause our actual results, performance, and financial condition to differ materially from our expectations. See “Risk Factors” in APA’s Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, and in our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a discussion of risk factors that affect our business. Any forward-looking statement made in this news release speaks only as of the date on which it is made. Factors or events that could cause our actual results to differ may emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all of them. APA and its subsidiaries undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future development or otherwise, except as may be required by law.

APA-F

Key Takeaways LMT added major missile, space and naval defense contracts, expanding backlog and revenue visibility.LMT faces program losses, production delays and integration challenges on key defense programs.LMT trades below the industry's forward P/S average, while long-term contracts support future growth. Lockheed Martin’s (LMT - Free Report) shares have risen 2.9% over the past month, underperforming the Zacks Aerospace-Defense industry’s growth of 7.3%. However, the company remains one of the largest U.S. defense contractors with a steady order flow from the Pentagon and other U.S. allies.
 

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Other defense stocks, such as The Boeing Company (BA - Free Report) and Northrop Grumman (NOC - Free Report) , have also underperformed the industry during the same period. Shares of Boeing and Northrop Grumman have risen 7.2% and 1.5%, respectively, during the same time frame.

With Lockheed Martin lagging its industry, investors are likely questioning the stock’s near-term direction. A closer look at the company's strengths, challenges and growth drivers can help assess whether the recent weakness presents a buying opportunity or warrants caution.

Tailwinds for LMT StockLockheed Martin continues to strengthen its long-term revenue outlook by securing substantial contract awards across its core defense programs. During the first quarter of 2026, the company received approximately $7 billion in new awards within its Missiles and Fire Control segment, highlighted by a $4.8 billion fully funded undefinitized contract for the PAC-3 missile program. It also obtained contracts for long-lead materials supporting F-35 production under Lots 20 and 
21.

Recently, the company was awarded $3 billion by the U.S. Army to produce both standard and Extended-Range Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (“GMLRS”) rockets. This is expected to provide several long-term benefits for Lockheed Martin. The contract also reinforces Lockheed Martin's leadership in precision-guided rocket systems, an area experiencing sustained demand as the U.S. and allied nations replenish munitions stockpiles and strengthen long-range strike capabilities.

In June 2026, the company won a $514 million contract by U.S. Space Force for GPS IIIF Space Vehicles 23 and 24. This expands the company's funded backlog and extends production of the GPS IIIF constellation to 14 satellites, strengthening revenue visibility over the coming years. The award also reinforces Lockheed Martin's leadership in military space systems and positions it to benefit from the U.S. Space Force's ongoing modernization of the GPS network as older satellites are replaced.

Lockheed Martin also secured a $200.8 million contract from the U.S. Navy to continue providing Aegis Combat System operator and maintenance training for six international naval customers through 2031. This award benefits Lockheed Martin by extending a stable source of recurring revenues and strengthening its long-term relationships with international Aegis users. As the original developer of the Aegis Combat System, the company is well positioned to provide ongoing training, software updates, system enhancements, and lifecycle support throughout the program's duration.

Challenges for LMT StockLockheed Martin continues to face execution and cost-estimate risk on complex programs, particularly where fixed-price elements magnify the impact of schedule and performance issues. In the first quarter of 2026, the company recorded unfavorable profit adjustments on the F-16 program due to production performance and development delays, as well as on the C-130 program because of ongoing integration challenges and delivery delays.

The company also reported cumulative losses of approximately $1.8 billion on a classified Aeronautics program and approximately $1.46 billion on a classified program in MFC. Both programs continue to carry accrued losses on the balance sheet and could incur additional losses if scope, schedule or cost estimates move further.

Estimates for LMT StockThe Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2026 earnings per share (EPS) indicates year-over-year growth of 29.46%. LMT’s long-term (three to five years) earnings growth rate is 18.48%.
 

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Boeing’s 2026 EPS indicates year-over-year growth of 98.6%.  The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Northrop Grumman’s 2026 EPS indicates year-over-year growth of 6.2%. NOC’s long-term earnings growth rate is 5.25%.

LMT’s Earnings Surprise HistoryThe company beat on earnings in three of the trailing four quarters and missed in one, delivering an average surprise of 9.44%.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

LMT Stock’s LiquidityThe company’s current ratio is 1.14 compared with the industry’s average of 1.12. The ratio of more than one suggests a healthy liquidity position where the business can meet its immediate financial obligations without selling long-term assets.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

LMT Stock Trades at a DiscountIn terms of valuation, LMT’s forward 12-month price-to-sales (P/S) is 1.53X, a discount to the industry’s average of 2.67X. This suggests that investors would be paying a lower price relative to the company’s expected sales growth compared with its peer group.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

What Should an Investor Do Now?Lockheed Martin continues to strengthen its long-term growth outlook through a steady flow of contract awards across its missile systems, fighter aircraft, military space, and naval defense businesses, reinforcing demand for its core platforms. These awards expand backlog, improve multi-year revenue visibility, and create opportunities for recurring production, modernization, training, and sustainment work, supporting durable long-term growth.

Considering its financial pressures and current price underperformance, new investors should wait and watch for a better entry point. Investors who already hold this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock may consider retaining it, given the company’s earnings growth outlook and strong liquidity.

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

, /PRNewswire/ -- AGNC Investment Corp. (Nasdaq: AGNC) announced today that its Board of Directors has declared a cash dividend of $0.12 per share of common stock for July 2026. The dividend is payable on August 11, 2026 to common stockholders of record as of July 31, 2026.

For further information or questions, please contact Investor Relations at (301) 968-9300 or [email protected].

ABOUT AGNC INVESTMENT CORP.
Founded in 2008, AGNC Investment Corp. (Nasdaq: AGNC) is a leading investor in Agency residential mortgage-backed securities (Agency MBS), which benefit from a guarantee against credit losses by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or Ginnie Mae. We invest on a leveraged basis, financing our Agency MBS assets primarily through repurchase agreements, and utilize dynamic risk management strategies intended to protect the value of our portfolio from interest rate and other market risks.

AGNC has a track record of providing favorable long-term returns for our stockholders through substantial monthly dividend income, with over $16 billion of common stock dividends paid since inception. Our business is a significant source of private capital for the U.S. residential housing market, and our team has extensive experience managing mortgage assets across market cycles. To learn more about The Premier Agency Residential Mortgage REIT, please visit www.AGNC.com, follow us on LinkedIn and X, and sign up for Investor Alerts.

CONTACT:
Investor Relations - (301) 968-9300

SOURCE AGNC Investment Corp.

Resources Investor Relations Journalists Agencies Client Login Send a Release News Products Contact , /PRNewswire/ -- The Allstate Corporation (NYSE: ALL) announced today its board of directors approved a quarterly dividend of $1.08 on each outstanding share of the corporation's common stock to be payable in cash on Oct. 1, 2026, to stockholders of record at the close of business on Aug. 31, 2026.

Financial information, including material announcements about The Allstate Corporation, is routinely posted on www.allstateinvestors.com.

About Allstate

The Allstate Corporation (NYSE: ALL) protects people from life's uncertainties with affordable, simple and connected protection for autos, homes, electronic devices and identities. Products are available through a broad distribution network including Allstate agents, independent agents, major retailers, online and at the workplace. Allstate has more than 212 million policies in force and is widely known for the slogan "You're in Good Hands with Allstate." For more information, visit www.allstate.com.

SOURCE The Allstate Corporation

Also from this source

The submission marks an important milestone in FMC's efforts to advance next-generation weed control technologies as resistance pressure intensifies in key row crop markets.

, /PRNewswire/ -- FMC Corporation (NYSE: FMC), a leading global agricultural sciences company, today announced it has submitted the regulatory dossier for rimisoxafen to the United States (U.S.) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the first regulatory submission globally for this groundbreaking herbicide active ingredient. The U.S. submission covers use on corn, soybean, sunflower and select pulse crops.

"Filing the first regulatory dossier for rimisoxafen with the EPA represents a significant milestone for FMC," said Seva Rostovtsev, executive vice president and chief technology officer at FMC. "Years of innovation and scientific discovery have brought us to this point, and we are proud to advance this breakthrough dual mode of action technology through the regulatory process on behalf of growers facing increasingly complex weed resistance challenges."

Discovered at FMC's Stine Research Center and built on over a decade of biology research and more than 1,000 field and greenhouse studies, rimisoxafen is the first herbicide active ingredient ever classified as a dual mode of action by the Global Herbicide Resistance Action Committee (HRAC). Designated under Groups 12 and 32, rimisoxafen inhibits two distinct biochemical pathways in weeds, which helps delay resistance development compared to single mode of action herbicides.

Herbicide-resistant weeds continue to challenge growers and drive demand for new and underutilized modes of action. According to a 2025 Weed Science Society of America National Weed Survey, Palmer amaranth and waterhemp rank as the most troublesome broadleaf weeds in U.S. soybean production1. In extensive field testing, rimisoxafen has demonstrated consistent activity against both. The U.S. represents a critical market for next-generation weed control solutions with more than 70 million hectares of corn and soybeans grown annually and growers spending more than $6 billion annually on weed control.

Rimisoxafen is the third novel herbicide active ingredient FMC has advanced to regulatory submission in recent years, following Isoflex™ active and Dodhylex™ active. Together, these submissions reflect the depth and productivity of FMC's R&D pipeline and the company's commitment to advancing next-generation crop protection solutions through the regulatory process.

FMC intends to pursue regulatory submissions for rimisoxafen in additional key geographies and crop segments as part of its global development program. Timing and outcomes are subject to regulatory review and approval in each jurisdiction. Rimisoxafen is not currently registered for sale or use in the United States or any other country. No offer for sale, sale or use of this product is permitted prior to receipt of all required regulatory approvals.

About FMC

FMC Corporation is a global agricultural sciences company dedicated to helping growers produce food, feed, fiber and fuel for an expanding world population while adapting to a changing environment. FMC's innovative crop protection solutions – including biologicals, crop nutrition, digital and precision agriculture – enable growers and crop advisers to address their toughest challenges economically while protecting the environment. FMC is committed to discovering new herbicide, insecticide and fungicide active ingredients, product formulations and pioneering technologies that are consistently better for the planet. Visit fmc.com to learn more and follow us on LinkedIn®.

Dodhylex and Isoflex are trademarks of FMC Corporation and/or an affiliate. Always read and follow all label directions, restrictions and precautions for use. Products listed here may not be registered for sale or use in all states, countries or jurisdictions.

Statement under the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: FMC and its representatives may from time to time make written or oral statements that are "forward-looking" and provide other than historical information, including statements contained in this press release, in FMC's other filings with the SEC, and in presentations, reports or letters to FMC stockholders.

In some cases, FMC has identified these forward-looking statements by such words or phrases as "outlook", "will likely result," "is confident that," "expect," "expects," "should," "could," "may," "will continue to," "believe," "believes," "anticipates," "predicts," "forecasts," "estimates," "projects," "potential," "intends" or similar expressions identifying "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including the negative of those words or phrases. Such forward-looking statements are based on our current views and assumptions regarding future events, future business conditions and the outlook for the company based on currently available information. The forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from any results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by any forward-looking statement. These statements are qualified by reference to the risk factors included in Part I, Item 1A of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 (the "2025 Form 10-K"), the section captioned "Forward-Looking Information" in Part II of the 2025 Form 10-K and to similar risk factors and cautionary statements in all other reports and forms filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). We wish to caution readers not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. Forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by the above cautionary statement.

We specifically decline to undertake any obligation, and specifically disclaims any duty, to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements that have been made to reflect events or circumstances after the date of such statements or to reflect the occurrence of anticipated or unanticipated events, except as may be required by law.

1 Van Wychen, L. (2025). 2025 Survey of the Most Common and Troublesome Weeds in Broadleaf Crops, Fruits & Vegetables, and Hemp in the United States and Canada. Weed Science Society of America National Weed Survey Dataset. Available at: https://wssa.net/2025/11/wssa-survey-shows-an-urgent-need-for-new-weed-control-strategies/

SOURCE FMC Corporation

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a statement from Bloom Energy.

Bloom Energy told Benzinga that the company is aware of the report “published by a media outlet affiliated with an investment firm that has disclosed it may hold positions designed to profit from a decline in Bloom’s stock,” and plans to issue a response.

“We are reviewing the report and will correct the record. Bloom’s fuel cell platform is supported by a diversified, multi-country supply chain built over two decades, long-standing commercial relationships, and proprietary materials-recovery technology, as described in our public filings and our July 7 blog post on scandium oxide,” a Bloom Energy spokesperson said.

Executive Supply Chain Claims ContradictedThe decline follows findings by Hunterbrook challenging statements made by Bloom Energy CEO KR Sridhar regarding the company’s independence from Chinese materials.

Sridhar stated during an April 2025 earnings call, “We are not dependent on China for scandium,” adding, “there is no China supply chain for us.”

However, global trade data, corporate filings, and satellite imagery analyzed by the news outlet indicate that the fuel-cell manufacturer continues to rely on Chinese-sourced scandium, said Hunterbrook.

Hidden Routes And Supplier ConnectionsHunterbrook traced four separate China-linked routes delivering scandium into the manufacturer’s supply chain.

Deliveries involve direct shipments of scandium oxide from Hunan Oriental Scandium to a Delaware plant, as well as intermediaries routing materials through Thailand, Japan, and South Korea.

A sales representative from Hunan Oriental Scandium told reporters, “We are also BE’s largest supplier of scandium,” noting the material is “not exported directly.”

Widening Deficits And Delayed ProjectsHunterbrook’s supply-demand model indicates a looming global deficit for fuel-cell-grade scandium oxide.

The research shows Bloom Energy alone requires roughly 220 tons of scandium oxide to meet the 5 gigawatt production expectations modeled by Wall Street, while the total projected global supply reaches approximately 240 tons.

BE Stock Price Activity: Bloom Energy shares were down 9.89% at $242.91 at the time of publication on Wednesday, according to Benzinga Pro data.

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This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

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© 2026 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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Key Takeaways Denali gained 59.4% YTD as Avlayah approval marked its shift to a commercial-stage company.DNLI will receive $195 million from selling its Rare Pediatric Disease Priority Review Voucher.DNLI regained full rights to DNL593 after Takeda ended the partnership for strategic reasons. Denali Therapeutics, Inc. (DNLI - Free Report) has put up a stupendous year-to-date performance. Shares of the company have surged 59.4% year to date compared with the industry’s growth of 5.9%. The stock has outperformed the sector and the S&P 500 Index during this time frame.

The rally is largely attributed to investor optimism surrounding FDA approval of its lead drug, Avlayah, for the treatment of Hunter syndrome, as well as other regulatory updates.

DNLI Outperforms Industry, Sector & S&P 500 Index
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

While the approval serves as a major catalyst, a deeper assessment of the company's growth drivers and potential risks will be essential to determine whether current levels represent an attractive entry point.

Avlayah Approval Positions DNLI for Long-Term UpsideAvlayah is an enzyme replacement therapy indicated for pediatric patients with Hunter syndrome (MPS II), targeting neurological symptoms when initiated early.

Developed by Denali, Avlayah is enabled by its TransportVehicle platform, which facilitates delivery of biologics throughout the body, including the brain.

Approval was based on strong biomarker data, showing a 91% reduction in cerebrospinal fluid heparan sulfate levels, a key disease marker.

This accelerated approval is particularly noteworthy as it introduces the first new therapeutic option for this rare disorder in nearly two decades. The continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification of clinical benefit in a confirmatory study.

Denali’s ongoing global phase II/III COMPASS study is expected to provide confirmatory data and support regulatory filings for tividenofusp alfa-eknm worldwide, including in young adult patients with Hunter syndrome.

The approval came with a Rare Pediatric Disease Priority Review Voucher (“PRV”).

Last month, DNLI entered into a definitive agreement to sell its PRV, which is expected to generate gross proceeds of $195 million.

The added financial flexibility will help advance Denali’s broad TransportVehicle-enabled clinical portfolio for lysosomal storage disorders and neurodegenerative diseases.

DNLI’s Other Pipeline CandidatesDenali's clinical-stage portfolio includes DNL126 for Sanfilippo syndrome type A (MPS IIIA), DNL593 for GRN-related frontotemporal dementia, DNL952 for Pompe disease and DNL628 for Alzheimer's disease.

Denali is also advancing several early-stage pipeline candidates, including DNL921 for Alzheimer's disease, DNL111 for Parkinson’s and Gaucher diseases, DNL622 for Hurler syndrome (MPS I), and DNL422 (OTV) for Parkinson’s disease.

Denali has also collaborated with other pharma and biotech giants like Sanofi (SNY - Free Report) , Biogen (BIIB - Free Report) and Takeda (TAK - Free Report) to develop other candidates.

In May 2026, Denali and partner Biogen announced disappointing top-line results from a mid-stage study evaluating BIIB122 (DNL151) in individuals with early-stage Parkinson’s disease. The study did not meet its primary or secondary endpoints.

Biogen and Denali have discontinued the development of BIIB122 in idiopathic Parkinson’s disease.

Nonetheless, Denali will continue to independently advance the phase IIa BEACON study evaluating the small-molecule inhibitor in patients carrying pathogenic LRRK2 variants.

Partner Sanofi is developing eclitasertib for moderate-to-severe ulcerative colitis.

In April 2026, Denali announced that partner Takeda decided to terminate their collaboration for DNL593 (PTV:PGRN) in frontotemporal dementia associated with GRN mutations (FTD-GRN).

The termination returns full rights to the program to Denali. According to DNLI, Takeda's decision was driven by strategic priorities rather than any efficacy or safety concerns.

However, Takeda’s exit may raise concerns. Even though the decision was not tied to safety or efficacy, the loss of a large pharma partner removes external validation and shared financial burden.

Denali’s Valuation and EstimatesGoing by the price/book ratio, DNLI’s shares currently trade at 4.51X, higher than its mean of 3.02X for the industry and the industry’s mean of 3.64X.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2026 loss per share has narrowed to $2.77 from $2.90 over the past 60 days, while that for 2027 loss has narrowed to $2.53 from $2.69 in the same time frame.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Invest in DNLI Stock NowThe approval of Avlayah represents Denali’s transition into a commercial-stage company and a potential inflection point in its long-term growth trajectory. As its first marketed product, Avlayah introduces a new revenue stream, though the pace and scale of commercialization will be critical in determining its ultimate financial impact.

Beyond near-term revenues, the approval also validates Denali’s proprietary TransportVehicle platform, which is designed to enable biologic therapies to cross the blood-brain barrier — an area that has historically posed significant challenges.

On the financial front, Denali appears well capitalized, ending the first quarter with approximately $1.05 billion in cash and investments. This provides sufficient runway to support ongoing clinical development and strategic initiatives. Narrowing loss estimates indicate improving investor sentiment and a clearer path toward operational leverage.

The sale of PRV provides a significant non-dilutive capital infusion, strengthening the company’s balance sheet without requiring an equity raise.

We remain bullish on the stock's prospects and believe it offers additional upside potential. Accordingly, we view the shares favorably for prospective investors, while existing shareholders may consider maintaining their positions to capitalize on further growth opportunities.

The AI infrastructure boom is still in its early days. Alphabet (GOOG 2.04%) (GOOGL 1.89%) has initiated an $84.75 billion equity capital raise "to expand AI infrastructure and compute," while Amazon (AMZN 1.23%) more recently issued over $25 billion in corporate bonds for AI investments.

All that money has to go somewhere, and some of it can flow into Sterling Infrastructure's (STRL 2.03%) coffers. The construction company has turned into a top AI data center builder, and as demand for those facilities rises, Sterling Infrastructure will continue to build on its backlog.

Image source: Getty Images.

The e-infrastructure opportunity Sterling Infrastructure is a site development specialist for residential and commercial properties. It also helps with transportation infrastructure, which includes highways, roads, and bridges. Those parts of the business had moderate growth in the first quarter, but they were completely overshadowed by e-infrastructure.

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That's the part of the business that's focused on AI data centers, e-commerce warehouses, and advanced manufacturing facilities. Its revenue was up by 174% year over year in the quarter, and a $5.15 billion backlog offers clear revenue visibility for multiple years. Sterling Infrastructure was recently awarded a contract to develop a large, multi-year semiconductor fabrication campus. The company has secured the initial developmental phase of that project and could end up building the entire facility.

AI infrastructure demand won't be slowing down anytime soon. Alphabet and Amazon are going deep into their pockets and raising capital to build more sites and buy key components that enable AI technology. E-infrastructure has served as a major catalyst, and if its revenue continues to accelerate, overall sales will go up with it.

Assessing the 30% drop Although Sterling Infrastructure enjoys solid fundamentals and AI spending continues to climb, the stock is down by more than 30% from all-time highs. Furthermore, it's down by more than 20% over the past month. This isn't a Sterling Infrastructure problem, since many AI stocks have endured sharp corrections over the past month.

Even Micron (MU +0.93%) wasn't safe. More than quadrupling revenue year over year wasn't enough for the company to avoid a 20% downturn in less than two weeks.

The fact that many AI stocks and tech companies are in the middle of corrections indicates that Sterling Infrastructure is not suffering from company-specific issues. Its fundamentals are improving despite the sell-off, and investors will soon pick up on that opportunity.

Sterling Infrastructure's full-year revenue projections also point to meaningful expansion. It's expected to reach $3.75 billion in total revenue at the midpoint, which represents a 50.6% year-over-year growth rate from the $2.49 billion in total revenue in full-year 2025.

While some investors are cashing out, others can benefit by investing in the dip and capitalizing on long-term AI tailwinds at a discount.

Marc Guberti has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Micron Technology, and Sterling Infrastructure. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

SpaceX moved Bitcoin (BTC) on-chain for the first time in six months on Tuesday. The company sent an $88 test transaction between two of its tagged wallets, blockchain tracker Arkham Intelligence reported.

The tiny transfer instantly revived a familiar question. SpaceX holds 18,712 BTC, and Elon Musk’s companies rarely touch their coins without drawing market attention.

Is SpaceX Moving Its Bitcoin?Arkham flagged the transaction on Wednesday. The funds traveled from a legacy “15atF” address to a newer “bc1q9” address.

SpaceX Bitcoin test transaction between tagged wallets. Source: Arkham “A tagged SpaceX address just moved Bitcoin for the first time in 6 months. SpaceX (15atF) made a test transaction of $88 of BTC to SpaceX (bc1q9). Is SpaceX about to move more BTC?” Arkham posed.

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The question posed by Arkham itself fuels speculation. Tiny test sends are a standard custody step that verifies a new address before larger sums follow.

SpaceX has followed this playbook before. In October 2025, Arkham research recorded 2,495 BTC, worth $257 million, landing in two fresh wallets after months of quiet. That followed a $300 million shift to Coinbase Prime custody in July 2025.

SPACEX MOVING $250 MILLION BTC

SpaceX has just moved a total of $268.5 Million BTC. This involves them moving 90 and 10 BTC to separate wallets, with the other $257.7M remaining in SpaceX wallets.

What is SpaceX doing with 100 BTC? pic.twitter.com/Hb4rPBx7Ma

— Arkham (@arkham) October 21, 2025 Traders also remember that SpaceX has sold before. Arkham’s records show it offloaded two large chunks of its stack during the 2022 crypto winter. Tesla, by contrast, has left its 11,509 BTC untouched since 2024.

No Evidence of a Sale as Holdings Stay at 18,712 BTCStill, nothing currently points to selling. BitcoinTreasuries shows 18,712 BTC, unchanged since the May 21 S-1 filing that preceded SpaceX’s June 12 IPO.

SpaceX BTC Holdings. Source: Bitcoin TreasuriesThat filing also reframed what wallet watchers can see. On-chain trackers had estimated roughly 8,285 BTC, so the disclosure revealed 10,427 BTC they had never traced. In other words, Arkham’s tagged addresses cover less than half the treasury.

Ownership concentrates the decision further. Musk was expected to keep a controlling stake above 85%, leaving any accumulation or disposal at his discretion.

The timing adds intrigue. SpaceX stock joined the Nasdaq-100 this week, while BTC trades near $62,060, roughly half its October peak of $126,080. Consequently, the stash is worth about $1.2 billion, down from $1.45 billion at the time of disclosure.

Wallet data can move sentiment fast. Reports of MicroStrategy’s larger-than-reported sales showed as much just last week. Similarly, activity from long-dormant Bitcoin wallets tends to signal consolidation rather than selling.

If precedent holds, the $88 send points to custody housekeeping rather than an exit. However, follow-up transfers from the new address in the coming days would reveal whether a larger reshuffle is underway.

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

SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK | SNDK Price Prediction | SNDK Price Prediction) has become the strangest stock in the S&P 500. Shares are up 634.87% year to date, dwarfing the 67.8% gain on the VanEck Semiconductor ETF. Behind the move is a genuine business transformation.

Q3 FY26 revenue hit $5.95 billion, up 251.03% year over year, with datacenter revenue exploding 645%. CEO David Goeckeler called it “a fundamental inflection point for Sandisk”. Can SanDisk shares reach $2,500 by 2027? There is a real path, but it is not a straight line.

Why SanDisk Shares Have Stalled This Summer The stock is down 14.92% over the past week despite being up 11.87% over one month.

Two factors are at play. First, a broader semiconductor sell-off tied to South Korean semiconductor weakness jolted the group in late June. Second, investors are booking profits after one of the sharpest rallies in memory-chip history.

Alpha Vantage flagged “SanDisk Slides as Chip Sell-Off Jolts Investors” and questioned whether the name is overbought at a trailing P/E of 60. Beta sits at 1, but realized volatility is much higher given the 52-week range from $40.10 to $2,354.39. That disconnect is keeping shares stuck.

Wall Street Sees Upside. Our Model Wants Proof The Street is decisively bullish. The consensus 12-month target is $1,930.50, with 3 Strong Buys, 15 Buys, 3 Holds, and 1 Sell. Bulls have gone further: Bernstein moved to $3,000 and China Renaissance reached $3,169. Our model is more cautious.

The one-year base case sits at $1,642.21, a total return of -5.86% with 90% confidence, driven by a mega-cap dampening factor. The bull case reaches $2,417.53. Earnings growth is contributing positively to the 247Factor, and 82% of analysts are bullish. That is a meaningful signal.

The Path to $2,500 Per Share Reaching $2,500 from today’s price of $1,744.43 would require a 43.3% gain. With forward EPS of $32.68, a price of $2,500 implies a forward P/E of 77x. Our base case of $1,642.21 already implies 56x, meaning the bold target requires roughly 20x of additional multiple expansion.

The same investor newsletter that told subscribers to buy Amazon in 2002, Netflix in 2004, and Nvidia in 2005 still publishes two new stock picks every month. Over 23 years, Motley Fool's Stock Advisor has more than quadrupled the S&P 500. New members get this month's picks, the Top 10 Rankings, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Click here to unlock their next top stocks while new members are still being accepted.

That is steep. But three things could get it done. Q4 FY26 guidance calls for revenue of $7.75B to $8.25B and non-GAAP EPS of $30 to $33. If those numbers hit, forward EPS will re-rate sharply higher and the implied multiple compresses.

Second, the New Business Model is real. Goeckeler said multi-year customer commitments are “driving structurally higher and more durable earnings power”.

Third, on July 3, 2026, SanDisk began sampling BiCS10 1Tb TLC 3D NAND with a 59% improvement in bit density, positioning the company inside the AI memory buildout. A resurgence of the sector sell-off is the primary risk.

Where SanDisk Trades Today Versus Its Earnings Power At $1,744.43, shares trade at a forward P/E of roughly 53x on $32.68 forward EPS. That is not cheap, but not absurd for a company printing 78.4% gross margins with a zero-debt balance sheet and $2.99 billion in quarterly free cash flow.

Shares sit 18% below the 52-week high, well within reach on any renewed NAND cycle. Since separating from Western Digital, SNDK has rallied over 3,489%. That history sets a wide range of possible outcomes.

Is $2,500 Realistic? Here’s My Take Getting SanDisk to $2,500 by 2027 requires a 43.3% gain from here. I think that is a stretch, but not a long shot.

Three things need to go right: Q4 EPS lands at the high end of guidance near $33, the New Business Model contracts continue accumulating, and the structural memory undersupply extends through 2027 as Bank of America expects. A pricing crack in NAND would derail it fast. We’ve outlined the blueprint for how SanDisk could reach $2,500 in 2027.

If You'd Bought Amazon When the Motley Fool Said To…In September 2002, Stock Advisor told subscribers to buy Amazon. In December 2004, Netflix. In April 2005, Nvidia. The newsletter still publishes two new stock picks every month — and over 23 years, has more than quadrupled the S&P 500. Here's how to get this month's picks:

- Join Stock Advisor for one year, with a 30-day money-back guarantee

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- Read the analysis, decide for yourself, and trade through your own brokerage

Five years from now, you'll probably wish you'd bought this month's picks. Don't miss them.

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Kraken’s WEMIX listing is not just another token notice for traders who follow gaming assets. It gives the project a larger regulated venue at a time when Web3 gaming tokens are trying to prove they still have a real market beyond hype cycles.

The useful way to read this is not as a guaranteed price signal, but as a fresh piece of information in a market that is trying to sort real developments from noise. For WEMIX, the broader issue is whether gaming-linked crypto assets can regain sustained attention. The last cycle produced plenty of gaming promises but uneven delivery. Listings on major exchanges help, but they do not replace the need for actual users and durable game economies.

For more details, visit the official Kraken platform.

TL;DR Kraken opened WEMIX spot trading.The listing gives the gaming-linked token more access to professional exchange liquidity.It adds another regulated venue for a token tied to Web3 gaming infrastructure. Why the venue matters A Kraken listing can change the liquidity profile of a token because it brings access to a more professional trading audience. That does not guarantee price strength, but it can increase visibility, improve execution options, and make the asset easier for desks to track.

For WEMIX, the broader issue is whether gaming-linked crypto assets can regain sustained attention. The last cycle produced plenty of gaming promises but uneven delivery. Listings on major exchanges help, but they do not replace the need for actual users and durable game economies.

The Market Read Specify available Kraken channels from the source if AG can verify during upload.

That is the balance readers need to keep in mind. Crypto markets are quick to turn every update into a single-direction trade, but most durable stories are more layered than that. They matter because they change positioning, incentives, infrastructure, or regulation over time.

What Comes Into Focus Now From here, the important thing is follow-through. If the source data, company update, filing, or on-chain record continues to move in the same direction, this can become part of a larger trend. If it stalls, it is still useful as a snapshot of where attention is sitting today.

For traders and readers, the cleaner takeaway is to separate the confirmed development from the speculation around it. The confirmed part is what deserves coverage. The speculation is what needs caution.

For Kraken readers specifically, the story is useful because it gives a clearer frame for the next few sessions. It tells them what to watch, which part of the market is reacting, and where the first obvious risk sits. That is more valuable than simply saying a token, company, or regulator has made a move. The useful work is in connecting the update to liquidity, positioning, adoption, enforcement, or user behaviour without pretending that any single headline controls the whole market.

The practical question now is whether this remains an isolated update or becomes part of a chain of follow-through. A second filing, another wallet move, fresh dashboard data, a new governance vote, or a stronger market reaction can all turn a clean single-day story into a broader narrative. Without that follow-through, it still matters, but more as a marker of where attention was concentrated on July 8 than as a complete trend on its own.

That distinction is especially important in a market where headlines can travel faster than context. A source-backed update gives readers something firmer to work with, but it does not remove liquidity risk, execution risk, or the chance that traders fade the initial reaction once the first wave of attention passes.

In that sense, the headline is only the starting point. The better read is to watch how builders, exchanges, funds, wallets, regulators, or large holders respond after the first announcement has moved through the feed.

This report is based on information from blog.kraken.com.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

Tesla stock (TSLA) fell on Wednesday as investors continued to look past the electric-vehicle maker's core automotive business and instead focused on the company's long-term artificial intelligence ambitions.

Shares were down 2.2% at $393.91 in midday trading after falling 4% on Tuesday.

The S&P 500 declined 0.8%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 1.5%.

AI remains the primary focus for investorsDespite reporting stronger-than-expected second-quarter deliveries earlier this month, Tesla's shares have remained under pressure.

The company recently reported stronger-than-expected second-quarter deliveries, selling about 480,000 vehicles worldwide, roughly 70,000 more than Wall Street had projected and 25% higher than a year earlier.

Even so, Tesla shares have declined since the delivery report and remain down about 10% for the year.

Investors continue to place greater emphasis on Tesla's long-term AI strategy, particularly the expansion of its robotaxi network and development of its Optimus humanoid robot.

Tesla launched its AI-trained robotaxi service in Austin about a year ago and now operates across three states.

Investors are waiting for the autonomous ride-hailing business to begin generating meaningful revenue and earnings.

The company is also developing the third generation of its Optimus humanoid robot, another project viewed as central to Tesla's long-term growth story.

For many investors, progress in robotaxis and robotics is expected to have a greater impact on Tesla's valuation than incremental improvements in vehicle sales.

Separately, JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta said on Tuesday that a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX appears "strategically coherent on paper" but would face significant regulatory and governance challenges.

According to Gupta, combining the two Elon Musk-led companies would unify leadership across businesses spanning artificial intelligence, robotics, transportation, energy, and space, while leveraging shared assets such as the Terafab semiconductor facility.

The analyst noted that SpaceX recently completed a record initial public offering that raised approximately $85 billion at $135 per share, valuing the company at around $2 trillion. Tesla's market capitalization is approximately $1.25 trillion.

Gupta said SpaceX's public listing provides valuable acquisition currency but identified several obstacles to any potential transaction.

He cited China as a major regulatory challenge because of SpaceX's US government and defense contracts alongside Tesla's extensive manufacturing operations in the country.

The analyst also highlighted governance concerns, noting that Musk controls roughly 85% of SpaceX's voting power but about 20% of Tesla's, potentially complicating any merger and raising dilution concerns for Tesla shareholders.

Gupta added that the size difference between the two companies could make the transaction resemble a SpaceX acquisition of Tesla rather than a merger of equals.

Even without a formal combination, the analyst said operational ties between the companies are already extensive through shared engineering talent, artificial intelligence infrastructure, and the Terafab facility in Texas.

These are bubbly days for Coca-Cola (KO 0.26%). Shares of the pop star hit another all-time high this week. With a carbonated stock chart, this might seem to be the worst time to warm up to the chilly refreshment provider. It's not.

From the syrupy sweet cadence of dividend hikes to what should be another modest earnings beat later this month, Coca-Cola has earned its upticks. With its generational appeal across a broad range of beverage categories, this could be a great month to consider owning a piece of this iconic brand. Let's take a closer look at some of the reasons why Coca-Cola is worth buying, even with the stock trading higher than ever right now.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. It's a recession-resistant winner This is an interesting time to be in the market. Investors woke up on Wednesday to news that the ceasefire in Iran has been called off, sending crude oil prices higher and stock prices -- initially -- lower. The possibility of inflationary-battling rate hikes later this year is starting to feel more like a probability. Consumer sentiment is dragging near a historic multi-year low.

It's against this backdrop that Coca-Cola is often at its best. It's a high-margin business doling out a liquid escape for pocket change. The beverage stock provides a creature comfort at an uncomfortable time for market creatures.

Coca-Cola doesn't deliver monster growth. The stock isn't cheap. However, what it consistently pours out is stability. Its five-year beta of 0.35 implies that Coca-Cola has had a little more than a third of the volatility of the general market over the past several years. Zoom in, and its one-year beta is roughly zero. Coca-Cola marches to its own sugary beat. If you're worried about the market right now, a perpetual low-beta name could be a thirst quencher for your portfolio.

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2. Dividend, we stan Coca-Cola stock is a money machine. All it does is sell high-margin syrup and bottling rights to local distributions that bear the grunt work of production and fulfillment. Its trailing net margin of 27.8% -- meaning that nearly $0.28 of every dollar in revenue makes it to the bottom line after taxes -- is at a 15-year high.

Longtime investors know about the timeless, perpetual growth of Coca-Cola, even if they aren't as avid followers of its financials as you and I. They see it in their quarterly dividend checks, which keep getting higher with every passing year.

Coca-Cola's current yield of 2.5% might not compete with a high-yielding money market fund, but it's almost certain to keep increasing over time. Coca-Cola has delivered 64 consecutive years of hikes, one of just dozens of Dividend King stocks. These aren't tiny hikes, either. Coca-Cola's dividend rate has more than doubled over the past 14 years.

3. And the beats keep coming If you need one final reason to own Coca-Cola this month, you may want to circle July 28 on your calendar. Coca-Cola will announce its second-quarter results that morning. Earnings season is often a time for investors to brace for volatility, but it's already established that Coca-Cola -- while not a risk-free investment -- has historically been less volatile than the market.

Coca-Cola's full-year guidance announced back in April calls for adjusted organic revenue growth of 4% to 5% for all of 2026. Adjusted earnings per share should clock in slightly higher. Analysts see that playing out in the second quarter later this month, with revenue rising 4% to $13.1 billion and adjusted earnings per share climbing 7% to $0.93.

It's a fair bet that the bottom line will come in a couple of pennies above that. Just see how reality has consistently exceeded expectations for more than two years.

PeriodEPS EstimateActual EPSSurpriseQ1 2024$0.70$0.723%Q2 2024$0.81$0.844%Q3 2024$0.75$0.773%Q4 2024$0.52$0.556%Q1 2025$0.72$0.732%Q2 2025$0.84$0.874%Q3 2025$0.78$0.825%Q4 2025$0.56$0.583%Q1 2026$0.81$0.866% Data source: Yahoo! Finance. EPS = earnings per share (adjusted).

The beats on the bottom line have been positive but modest. Its latest quarter's beat of 6% may not seem like a lot, but it's a two-year high. It's just one more way that Coca-Cola is consistent heading into what should be a topsy-turvy earnings season for many investors. Coca-Cola's all-weather appeal and a steady beat of dividend hikes every February and earnings beats every quarter should continue to serve shareholders well.