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Alphabet rises after reporting solid Q2 earnings and plans to increase capex spend to $85 billion

Alphabet’s stock rose slightly after the tech giant posted second-quarter results just above Wall Street’s expectations.

Shares were up a little more than 1% in after-hours trading.

Google’s parent company expects to spend $85 billion on capital expenditures this year, an increase from the $75 billion it said earlier this year.

For the quarter, Alphabet posted $96.4 billion in revenue, up 14% year over year. Analysts were expecting revenue of $93.9 billion.

Diluted earnings per share came in at $2.31, beating analysts’ expectations of $2.18.

Let’s break down the results for Alphabet’s many divisions:

  • YouTube’s Q2 ad revenue rose 13% to $9.8 billion.

  • Google Cloud revenue for Q2 was $13.6 billion, growing 31% year over year, driven by growth in AI Infrastructure and Generative AI Solutions.

  • Google’s Search business brought in $54.2 billion, up 12%.

  • Google advertising revenue was $71.3 billion, a 10% increase year over year.

In the earnings release, CEO Sundar Pichai said:

“We had a standout quarter, with robust growth across the company. We are leading at the frontier of AI and shipping at an incredible pace. AI is positively impacting every part of the business, driving strong momentum."

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Oil settles Friday at highest level since start of war

US oil prices moved higher in afternoon trading Friday, sapping strength from the stock market as they posted their highest close since the start of the Iran war.

After another day where the Strait of Hormuz was essentially closed to global tanker traffic, US futures for West Texas Intermediate settled up 3.1% at $98.71 a barrel for an 8.6% weekly gain, per Dow Jones data.

American officials have discussed using the US Navy to escort tankers through the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman, but have said plans for such convoys are not ready yet. However, it is unclear if military convoys would bring an end to the war-related dislocations in the oil market.

“It could help,” Tom Liles, senior vice president of upstream research at energy consulting firm Rystad, told Sherwood News in a recent interview. “It could also go in a lot of different directions if a Navy ship is hit or if a tanker is hit.”

American officials have discussed using the US Navy to escort tankers through the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman, but have said plans for such convoys are not ready yet. However, it is unclear if military convoys would bring an end to the war-related dislocations in the oil market.

“It could help,” Tom Liles, senior vice president of upstream research at energy consulting firm Rystad, told Sherwood News in a recent interview. “It could also go in a lot of different directions if a Navy ship is hit or if a tanker is hit.”

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Memory stocks rebound off last weeks losses

Memory stocks Micron, Sandisk, Western Digital, and Seagate Technology Holdings rose again Friday, putting these crucial providers of chips for AI inference work on track for big weekly gains after last week’s steep losses following the outbreak of war with Iran.

There’s no obvious trigger for the move higher for these shares this week, other than a bit of a recovery in the AI trade more broadly — AI beneficiaries like IT cable and connections maker Amphenol and custom chip and networking company Marvell Technology clawed back some gains this week — perhaps due Oracle’s earnings earlier, and some mean reversion to boot.

Micron is due to report earnings after the close of trading on Wednesday, with the company catching a couple price target hikes this week, including one from Wedbush on Friday.

Sandisk is something of a different story, as its enormous gains over the last 12 months — roughly 1,200% — have made it a momentum play beloved by the retail crowd.

It was up about 20% this week at around 11 a.m. ET. And its nearly 170% gain this year keeps the stock on top of the S&P 500, in terms of price performance.

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