Markets
Nia Warfield, Luke Kawa

US stocks power higher on Apple’s US investment plans, solid corporate earnings

Tuesday’s drop was just another opportunity to buy the dip.

The S&P 500 rose 0.7% and the Nasdaq 100 outperformed with a 1.3% advance, while the Russell 2000 once again bucked the trend, dropping 0.2%.

The day got off to a strong start when the White House touted an additional $100 billion in domestic investment from Apple ahead of the market open, which fueled the iPhone maker’s 5% rise on Wednesday.

The S&P sector ETFs for consumer discretionary, consumer staples, and tech all rose at least 1%. On the other side of the spectrum, materials and healthcare were down more than 1%.

Gains were led by Arista Networks, which rose 17% after delivering stellar earnings after the close on Tuesday and enjoyed a host of price target hikes across Wall Street thereafter. Declines were led in part by AMD, which fell 6% after the chip company delivered a modest bottom-line miss and a big beat on sales for the second quarter.

Elsewhere…

Shopify soared 22% after the e-commerce giant missed Q2 revenue estimates but said it expects revenue to grow at a mid- to high 20s percentage rate.

Match Group rose double digits after the Tinder and Hinge parent topped analysts’ revenue estimates after the bell Tuesday and told Wall Street to expect more of the same in Q3.

McDonald’s rose nearly 3% after the Big Mac maker posted a US sales rebound in the second quarter — a comeback after a rough start to the year.

IonQ finished virtually flat ahead of earnings tech juggernaut Amazon reporting that it held 854,207 shares of the quantum computing stock at the end of Q2.

Power producer and energy trader NRG dove double digits after adjusted earnings fell short of Wall Street expectations and GAAP results swung to a surprise loss.

Disney shares fell 2.7% even as the media giant beat Q3 estimates, raised its full-year outlook, and reportedly struck a $1.6 billion streaming deal between ESPN and WWE. Shares of TKO, which owns WWE, dropped 5%.

Astera Labs surged nearly 30% after the chips, boards, and integrated circuit maker delivered strong top- and bottom-line Q2 results after the bell Tuesday.

Uber closed flat even after the ride-hailing giant posted upbeat second-quarter results and unveiled a beefy new stock buyback plan.

Shares of Super Micro Computer tumbled 18% after disappointing fourth-quarter results, which saw the server company whiff on sales and earnings.

Rivian shares dipped 4% after the EV maker topped revenue estimates for the second quarter but losses came in higher than expected. Meanwhile, Lucid shares fell 10% after the luxury EV maker also saw Q2 losses pile up.

Snap’s stock plunged 17% after the social media company narrowly missed earnings expectations and ad revenue slowed.

Oscar Health managed to rise almost 4% despite the health insurance company reporting earnings that missed estimates, even after giving investors a look under the hood last month.

Novo Nordisk slipped nearly 4% after it reported growing sales of its blockbuster GLP-1 drugs but reiterated that knockoffs were eating at its weight-loss business.

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markets
J. Edward Moreno

Moderna soars after STAT reports “a buyout or a large partnership” are on the table

Moderna rose nearly 15% on Thursday after STAT reported that the company has flirted with the idea of tying up with a larger drugmaker.

The Covid vaccine-maker has talked to at least one large drugmaker on a deal "of significant scope" that could either be "a buyout or a large partnership," a source told STAT.

Read more

How Moderna, the company that helped save the world, unraveled

How Moderna, the company that helped save the world, unraveled
markets
Luke Kawa

OpenAI appears to be definitively answering its doubters’ biggest question

The AI boom is power constrained. It’s chip constrained.

But it will not be capital constrained.

That’s the top takeaway from media reports from The Wall Street Journal and Reuters that OpenAI is plotting an IPO.

That message is also corroborated by anecdotal reports that the order book for Meta’s $25 billion bond offering is roughly $125 billion (!), per a source familiar with the situation.

My colleague David Crowther recently wrote that OpenAI would likely need to raise $50 billion to $75 billion to fund its spending ambitions, which are poised to drive $115 billion in cash burn through 2029.

The most common question raised by OpenAI skeptics has been, “Where is OpenAI going to get all this money?”

A mulled IPO might suggest that OpenAI’s ability to raise money from private markets is reaching its limits. But it also tells us the answer to that question is “from literally anyone who wants to.”

And in a world where SPACs are back and speculation is rampant, something we should have known all along is that people want to. The technology and the unit economics of AI will have to prove their failures, or reach a much higher level of saturation, before capital will shy away from an opportunity billed as this transformative.

Per Reuters, OpenAI is looking to raise about $60 billion at a $1 trillion valuation from the offering — significantly reducing any funding needs through 2029 in one fell swoop.

OpenAI has started work on an IPO that could value the company at $1 trillion

OpenAI has started work on an IPO that could value the company at $1 trillion

That message is also corroborated by anecdotal reports that the order book for Meta’s $25 billion bond offering is roughly $125 billion (!), per a source familiar with the situation.

My colleague David Crowther recently wrote that OpenAI would likely need to raise $50 billion to $75 billion to fund its spending ambitions, which are poised to drive $115 billion in cash burn through 2029.

The most common question raised by OpenAI skeptics has been, “Where is OpenAI going to get all this money?”

A mulled IPO might suggest that OpenAI’s ability to raise money from private markets is reaching its limits. But it also tells us the answer to that question is “from literally anyone who wants to.”

And in a world where SPACs are back and speculation is rampant, something we should have known all along is that people want to. The technology and the unit economics of AI will have to prove their failures, or reach a much higher level of saturation, before capital will shy away from an opportunity billed as this transformative.

Per Reuters, OpenAI is looking to raise about $60 billion at a $1 trillion valuation from the offering — significantly reducing any funding needs through 2029 in one fell swoop.

markets
Max Knoblauch

Bearish options flow sends Lucid lower

Shares of luxury EV maker Lucid are being dragged down by bearish options trading on Thursday morning, with a put/call ratio of 5.8 as of 11:10 a.m. ET, versus the 1.05 it’s averaged over the prior 20 days.

If sustained, this would be the most bearishly tilted options activity for a single session for Lucid since June 21, 2024.

More than 32,000 put options have changed hands as of 11:10 a.m. ET, already above Lucid’s 30,794 20-day average for a full session. Lucid shares were down about 3% on Thursday morning.

On Wednesday, Lucid and Uber announced that their planned 20,000-robotaxi fleet would begin operations in the autonomously crowded streets of San Francisco starting next year. Earlier this week, Lucid also said it’s partnering with Nvidia to build autonomous vehicles for personal use.

markets
Luke Kawa

Boeing slumps as Trump-Xi meeting produces no purchase announcements, Deutsche Bank downgrades to “hold” from “buy”

Blackwell chips weren’t the only thing that US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping didn’t talk about that was supposed to be on the agenda.

Andrew Bishop, global head of policy research at Signum Global Advisors, flagged that “multiple previously-mentioned items were seemingly left out of the deal,” including purchases of Boeing aircraft by China.

Shares of Boeing are selling off amid the lack of a purchase agreement for the American company’s planes in the one-year deal and a downgrade by Deutsche Bank. Analyst Scott Deuschle lowered the stock to “hold” from “buy,” cutting his free cash flow estimates and writing that the company remains “constrained by the burdens of the past.” He also reduced his price target to $240 from $255.

The plane maker recently reported quarterly results, in which it booked its first quarter of positive free cash flow since its door plug blowout in January 2024.

markets
Luke Kawa

Core Scientific shareholders vote against acquisition by CoreWeave

CoreWeave’s latest attempt to purchase Core Scientific has failed.

Core Scientific announced that at its special meeting held earlier today, “the Company did not receive the requisite number of votes to approve the previously announced merger agreement with CoreWeave.”

This outcome was expected by markets, given that Core Scientific’s share price was trading well in excess of the deal price heading into this meeting, and major shareholders and proxy advisory firms had voiced their opposition to the tie-up.

Shares of Core Scientific initially popped on this news before quickly erasing all of that advance (and then some), while CoreWeave retreated deeper into the red.

CoreWeave’s acquisition would have represented meaningful vertical integration for the neocloud, providing it with ownership over existing data centers and a pipeline of more to come.

CoreWeave and Core Scientific still have an ongoing business relationship, however: the latter is the former’s landlord, and CoreWeave remains on the hook for $10 billion in overhead over the next 12 years that would have been eliminated by this deal.

"We respect the views of Core Scientific stockholders and look forward to continuing our commercial partnership,” said CoreWeave co-founder, Chairman, and CEO Michael Intrator in a press release. “CoreWeave’s strategy remains unchanged. We will continue to execute with discipline against our roadmap to create long-term shareholder value, including through opportunistic and strategic M&A.”

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