British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (L) is shown around by The Hut Group founder and CEO Matthew Moulding (R) during a visit to a fulfillment center in Warrington, in north-west England on December 10, 2019.
BEN STANSALL | POOL | AFP via Getty Images
LONDON — British e-commerce company THG has said it knows of “no notifiable reason” for a 35% plunge in its share price on Tuesday.
The Softbank-backed firm‘s stock suddenly nosedived during late afternoon trade to notch its worst single-day performance since listing on the London Stock Exchange last September.
The move came following the company’s capital market day, which set out to reassure investors and analysts that THG could turn things around, with shares now down 65% since the turn of the year.
In his presentation, intended to assuage concerns and explain THG’s Ingenuity sales platform, CEO and founder Matt Moulding lashed out at short-sellers, but analysts were left disappointed.
In a statement to the market on Wednesday, THG added that “no material new information was disclosed at the event.”
“Since its IPO in September 2020, THG has consistently delivered ahead of its targets set at the time of IPO and recently reported a strong first half performance across all divisions, with Group revenue of £958.8 million ($1.31 billion), +44.7% year-on-year,” the company said.
“The Group also has a very strong liquidity position as it enters its peak trading season, with available cash as at 30 September 2021 of £700.0 million across long dated 3-5 year facilities.”
Although capital markets days are intended to help analysts and investors better understand certain aspects of a business, THG’s effort was “eye-opening for the wrong reasons,” according to Russ Mould, investment director at British online stockbroker AJ Bell.
“It seems that attendees didn’t get the level of information they wanted, and messages were quickly fed back to HQ to dump the stock,” Mould said.
“Having joined the stock market with a lot of fanfare, the market now seems to be taking the view that THG was grossly overvalued and that breaking the business up creates more questions than answers.”
THG, previously known as The Hut Group, sells vitamin, nutrition and beauty products, running brands such as MyProtein, Lookfantastic and Mankind, while licensing out its technology. Its 500 pence per share IPO was one of the biggest technology floats of 2020.
Since announcing plans in September to spin off its beauty business in favor of focusing on THG Ingenuity — an e-commerce platform handling web sales and logistics for companies to sell products directly to consumers — the group’s share price has cratered.
SB Management, a division of Japanese tech giant SoftBank, announced in May that it would invest $1.6 billion into Ingenuity, giving it a 19.9% stake, while also taking a $730 million stake in THG itself.
A ‘conundrum for investors’
THG’s shares initially began to rebound on Wednesday, before falling more than 10%, and were down 4.6% by late morning. Mould suggested that the valuation following Tuesday’s freefall presents a “conundrum for investors.”
“On one hand, sentiment is incredibly weak towards the stock and there is no point going against the flow if the market has decided THG is a dud,” he said.
“On the other hand, investors are now being given the chance to snap up shares in a business at a price where the original source of excitement is now essentially thrown in for free.”
THG Ingenuity initially prompted substantial excitement, with key clients including Nestle and Unilever offering it significant credibility for investors.
Mould suggested that a lot of product manufacturers now want a direct-to-consumer service, meaning the growth prospects for the business are theoretically strong.
SoftBank’s buy option values the Ingenuity division at £4.6 billion at current exchange rates, but at Wednesday morning’s share price, the entire group was valued at around £3.15 billion, Mould highlighted.
Mould said this would effectively mean investors could buy the beauty and nutrition operations while acquiring the tech and logistics offerings for “nothing.” However, the big question remains as to what each business would look like as a standalone entity in terms of cost base, capital expenditure and cash flow, he suggested.
“THG has been criticized for not being open enough about the financial breakdown. Until it starts providing some answers, the shares could well remain under pressure as it’s very hard to properly value this business without all the right information,” he said.
While many of the largest tech companies race to build massive data centers for their artificial intelligence ambitions, Apple is taking a more modest approach.
Instead of simply buying as many AI chips as possible, Apple buys computing capacity from outside partners, finance chief Kevan Parekh explained Thursday on the company’s fourth quarter earnings call.
When Apple does build servers for its AI software, the company is using its own chips — not those from Nvidia or AMD — to power a service it calls Private Cloud Compute.
“I don’t see us moving away from this hybrid model, where we leverage both first-party capacity as well as leverage third-party capacity,” Parekh said.
Apple’s results on Thursday closed out a busy week of earnings for the tech industry. Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta reported on Wednesday, while Amazon reported on Thursday.
All of the companies said they planned to boost spending on capital expenditures to secure the computing capacity needed to develop next-generation AI and serve users.
Alphabet said it expects to spend about $92 billion on capital expenditures this year. Microsoft said it spent about $34.9 billion on capex during the September quarter and will spend more in capex for its fiscal 2026 than it did the year prior.
Meta stock got whacked after CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the company’s plan to spend about $71 billion on AI chips and other expenses in 2025. On Thursday, Amazon raised its 2025 spending forecast 6% to $125 billion.
Compared to them, Apple’s barely spending at all.
In its fiscal 2025, which ended in September, Apple spent $12.72 billion on capital expenditures.
And yet, that’s up 35% from what it spent last year, a significant increase. Parekh said Apple is expecting further increases. Analysts expect Apple’s capex to increase to $14.3 billion this year, according to FactSet.
“In ’25 we did have capex costs associated with building out our Private Cloud Compute environment in our first party data centers,” Parekh said. Earlier this month, Apple announced that it was starting to ship those servers from a factory in Houston.
Last year, the company released Apple Intelligence, a suite of AI tools that runs on the company’s chips that can summarize notifications, generate images like new emojis, and pass complicated queries to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Apple Intelligence has received mixed reviews from critics, and one of its centerpieces, an improved Siri assistant, was delayed by the company in May until 2026. The improved Siri is on track to come out next year, Apple said Thursday.
But if Apple’s decision to take a different approach to AI puts the company’s hardware sales at risk, it hasn’t happened yet.
Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC’s Steve Kovach that the consumer response to the company’s iPhone 17 models was “off the chart,” and the company said that overall sales would rise between 10% and 12% in the company’s December quarter. Apple executives were effusive on a call with analysts about the new iPhone’s popularity.
Still, Apple executives are aware that that AI features like Apple Intelligence are a factor in smartphone purchasing decisions.
“We’re very bullish on it becoming a greater factor,” Cook said.
Apple’s “hybrid” approach means that some of what the company spends on compute for AI ends up as an operating expense, instead of a capital expense. Analysts pressed Apple executives that the company’s operating expenses rose 11% in the past year to $15.91 billion.
“We are increasing our investments in AI, while also continuing to invest in our product roadmap,” Parekh said. “The vast majority of the increase to our operating expenses are driven by R&D.”
CEO of Palantir Technologies Alex Karp attends the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 15, 2025.
Andrew Caballero-reynolds | Afp | Getty Images
Palantir‘s head of global communications said Wednesday that the company’s political shift toward the Trump administration is “concerning.”
“I think it’s going to be challenging, as a lot of the company is moving pro-Trum-, you know, is moving in a certain direction,” communications chief Lisa Gordon said in an interview at The Information‘s Women in Tech, Media and Finance summit.
“It’s concerning,” she said, while noting she’s a Democrat and previously worked on Walter Mondale’s presidential campaign.
President Ronald Reagan defeated Mondale, who served as vice president under Jimmy Carter, in the 1984 presidential election.
“So until recently, we’re pretty much on both sides, and so it hasn’t been that challenging,” Gordon said about Republicans and Democrats. “I’m just starting to navigate that now, moving forward, where I feel like there’s been a shift.”
Palantir CEO Alex Karp, who has given money to the campaigns of former Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden, has been outspoken about his recent support for President Donald Trump.
Gordon said Karp’s “frustration with the Democrats” pushed him in a different direction politically.
Gordon told CNBC in an email that “Palantir welcomes diverse opinions.”
“The company has worked with four administrations and prides itself on supporting the nation no matter who’s in office,” she wrote.
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Palantir, which is also a donor for the White House’s new ballroom that is under construction, just inked a contract with the U.S. Army worth up to $10 billion over the next decade.
The deal further cemented the company’s role in the U.S. government’s focus on cost efficiencies by using artificial intelligence tools.
Palantir also sponsored the president’s parade for the U.S. Army‘s 250th birthday in June.
The analytics firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, has helped U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with data used for the agency’s crackdown on immigration. Palantir won a $30 million contract to build the government a new platform called ImmigrationOS that allows the agency to “streamline” the identification and deportation of immigrants.
Gordon’s comments this week show how internal dynamics within the company are working as it undergoes this political movement. Gordon has worked at Palantir since 2009.
“You don’t get fired for having a different position, but you will leave if you’re not aligned, ultimately, like if you don’t support Israel,” Gordon said, referring to Karp’s staunch support of Israel amid the conflict in Gaza.
Palantir has supplied tools to Israel during the war in Gaza. Israel launched the campaign after Hamas-led fighters stormed through southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and bringing 251 hostages back to Gaza.
As of this week, Gaza health authorities said 68,000 people were confirmed killed in the Israeli strikes and thousands more were missing.
Karp has said that the company has lost employees and expects to lose more over his public support for Israel.
“What we try to focus on are the missions, not the personalities so much and and staying true to the work,” said Gordon.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie speaks during a press conference at San Francisco City Hall on Oct. 23, 2025 in San Francisco, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who was recently thrust into a national debate about the safety of big cities, told CNBC on Thursday that he feels “pressure every day” to continue improving conditions for residents.
Last week, President Donald Trump reversed plans for a “federal surge” in San Francisco. The potential National Guard deployment hit the headlines when Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told the New York Times that he’d support Trump’s call for federal troops to be sent to the city.
Benioff’s sentiments were supported by Elon Musk and David Sacks, high-profile techies with close ties to the Trump administration. Benioff quickly backtracked as criticism mounted.
Unlike California Governor Gavin Newsom, Lurie has tried to avoid clashing with Trump since taking office in January. But he has spoken up to say that the city is progressing on business development and crime, often citing data to back up his claims.
In Thursday’s interview, Lurie’s first on television since the Trump incident, the mayor said there’s plenty of hard work ahead.
“I felt that pressure in January, I feel it today,” Lurie said, when asked about support from tech leaders. “I think they understand… when San Francisco is strong, America is strong.”
Lurie, a moderate Democrat, pointed to an array of data that show the city is making progress on a post-pandemic comeback, largely driven by the boom in investment and usage of artificial intelligence. CBRE data on venture funding show 2025 is expected to surpass the record reached in 2021, thanks in large part to AI investments in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
In addition, crime rates are down 30% from 2024, as event bookings and tourism are up, residential real estate is becoming more scarce and the office market is getting hot.
“We have a lot of competition out there in the world, and we are on the rise,” Lurie said. “Anything that would have hindered that rise is something that we don’t need.”
Lurie is also leveraging philanthropic commitments to work with the city in cleaning up streets and supporting small businesses. He shared on CNBC Thursday that the San Francisco Downtown Development Corporation has now raised $50 million for this effort, up from the $40 million at launch.
The goal is to spark a comeback, with the help of the tech boom in the city, but one that paves the way for all businesses to thrive, he said.
“What we’re trying to build here is a broad-based recovery at City Hall,” Lurie said. “Our job is to create the conditions so that not only these [tech] companies can succeed, but our restaurants and small businesses can succeed. We’re stripping away red tape. We’re telling everybody that we’re open for business. We want you here, and we want you to be part of the community.”