Charles Liang, chief executive officer of Super Micro Computer Inc., during the Computex conference in Taipei, Taiwan, on Wednesday, June 5, 2024. The trade show runs through June 7.
Annabelle Chih | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Super Micro investors continued to rush the exits on Friday, pushing the stock down another 9% and bringing this week’s selloff to 44%, after the data center company lost its second auditor in less than two years.
The company’s shares fell as low as $26.23, wiping out all of the gains for 2024. Shares had peaked at $118.81 in March, at which point they were up more than fourfold for the year. Earlier that month, S&P Dow Jones added the stock to the S&P 500, and Wall Street was rallying around the company’s growth, driven by sales of servers packed with Nvidia’sartificial intelligence processors.
Super Micro’s spectacular collapse since March has wiped out roughly $55 billion in market cap and left the company at risk of being delisted from the Nasdaq. On Wednesday, as the stock was in the midst of its second-worst day ever, Super Micro said it will provide a “business update” regarding its latest quarter on Tuesday, which is Election Day in the U.S.
The company’s recent challenges date back to August, when Super Micro said it would not file its annual report on time with the SEC. Noted short seller Hindenburg Research then disclosed a short position in the company and wrote in a report that it identified “fresh evidence of accounting manipulation.” The Wall Street Journal later reported that the Department of Justice was in the early stages of a probe into the company.
Super Micro disclosed on Wednesday that Ernst & Young had resigned as its accounting firm just 17 months after taking over from Deloitte & Touche. The auditor said it was “unwilling to be associated with the financial statements prepared by management.”
A Super Micro spokesperson told CNBC that the company “disagrees with E&Y’s decision to resign, and we are working diligently to select new auditors.” Super Micro does not expect matters raised by Ernst & Young to “result in any restatements of its quarterly financial results for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2024, or for prior fiscal years,” the representative said.
Analysts at Argus Research on Thursday downgraded the stock in the intermediate term to a hold, citing the Hindenburg note, reports of the Justice Department investigation and the departure of Super Micro’s accounting firm, which the analysts called a “serious matter.” Argus’ fears go beyond accounting irregularities, with the firm suggesting that the company may be doing business with problematic entities.
“The DoJ’s concerns, in our view, may be mainly about related-party transactions and about SMCI products ending up in the hands of sanctioned Russian companies,” the analysts wrote.
In September, the month after announcing its filing delay, Super Micro said it had received a notification from the Nasdaq indicating that its late status meant the company wasn’t in compliance with the exchange’s listing rules. Super Micro said the Nasdaq’s rules allowed the company 60 days to file its report or submit a plan to regain compliance. Based on that timeframe, the deadline would be mid-November.
Though Super Micro hasn’t filed financials with the SEC since May, the company said in an August earnings presentation that revenue more than doubled for a third straight quarter. Analysts expect that, for the fiscal first quarter ended September, revenue jumped more than 200% to $6.45 billion, according to LSEG. That’s up from $2.1 billion a year earlier and $1.9 billion in the same fiscal quarter of 2023.
Marvell Technology shares plummeted more than 19% after the chipmaker’s guidance fell short of some elevated buyside estimates.
For the first fiscal quarter, the chipmaker said it expects sales of about $1.88 billion. That was just ahead of the $1.87 billion expected by analysts polled by LSEG. However, the outlook fell short of some buyside expectations calling for around $2 billion in revenue, disappointing investors after the stock soared 83% in 2024.
The results fueled some concerns about Marvell’s partnership with Amazon Web Services on its Trainium AI chip, and the potential lack of upside for Marvell’s custom application-specific integrated circuits business.
“Solid numbers missed the high watermark set by the rest of the AMZN supply chain,” wrote Barclays analyst Tom O’Malley in a note after the report. “While the company continues to sound good re: the future of their ASIC prospects, the AMZN numbers near term are a bit lower, which is the real sticking point for a market punishing anything not perfect in AI.”
Marvell is known for creating customized chips and hardware used in data centers, networking and infrastructure. The company has benefited from the artificial intelligence boon that has lifted the sector, but chipmakers now face elevated expectations for financial performance.
For the fourth quarter, Marvell reported adjusted earnings per share of 60 cents and revenue of $1.82 billion. That was slightly ahead of the earnings per share estimate of 59 cents and $1.80 billion revenue prediction, according to LSEG.
Data centers revenue came in at $1.37 billion, beating the $1.36 billion average estimate.
Attendees walk through an exposition hall at AWS re:Invent, a conference hosted by Amazon Web Services, in Las Vegas on Dec. 3, 2024.
Noah Berger | Getty Images
Amazon’s cloud unit said Thursday that it’s launching a service to allow video game publishers to stream their games online.
GameLift Streams will deliver games to any device with a browser that supports the WebRTC standard, Amazon said in a blog post. That includes smart TVs, phones, tablets and PCs. One way the service can be used is to rapidly distribute titles in development to testers, and then securely remove access later.
“Lots of AAA games are using the service in that regard,” Chris Lee, general manager and head of immersive technologies at Amazon Web Services, told CNBC. A handful of companies, such as Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive, invest heavily in top-flight games with high production quality.
AWS generates a considerable amount of its revenue from core services such as renting out access to server and storage space, with data centers located around the world. But the company has hundreds of other services available to software developers. For the past decade, AWS has served as Amazon’s main profit engine.
Jackbox Games, a developer of casual games such as “Quiplash” and “Fibbage,” plans to rely on GameLift Streams to release a game-streaming service that will provide access to many of its titles. Jackbox’s games are currenlty available for an upfront fee.
Evan Jacover, Jackbox’s technology chief, said his company looked into building its own technology for streaming but decided to go with AWS after learning of its plans.
“It’s not a core competency at Jackbox Games,” Jacover said, adding the startup had a proof of concept, or POC. “We got a POC up, but it wasn’t efficient to get it really working well.”
Jackbox’s goal is to release an early ad-supported version of its service in the first half of the year, with more games and a subscription option to follow. Because the company’s games aren’t heavy on graphics, they don’t have major latency concerns and can work well on streaming.
Amazon GameLift Streams supports 1080p resolution at 60 frames per second.
“That’s kind of the sweet spot when we talk to customers,” Lee said.
Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Sony’s PlayStation 5 Pro can go up to 4K resolution and 120 frames per second, accommodating more advanced video. But modern game consoles cost hundreds of dollars.
The cost of GameLift Streams is based on which Nvidia graphics processing units customers use, along with consumption of storage for game data. Games can run on Windows or Linux. No modifications are required to integrate the service, the blog post said.
BARCELONA — China’s Huawei isn’t the only smartphone maker adding a third display to its devices.
At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) trade show in Barcelona, a number of firms were showing off their display technology innovations.
The South Korean tech giant Samsung revealed its new “trifold” concept devices at the event: the Flex G and Flex S.
The Flex G has three screens and folds flat inwards and outwards, a bit like a book. The Flex S, on the other hand, has a more zigzag-like shape. It’s meant to resemble an “S” — hence the name.
The Flex S is another concept device Samsung showed off at MWC. It folds in a more zigzag-like way to make an “S” shape.
Samsung stressed that its Flex G and S models were only concept devices — so don’t expect to find them on shelves anytime soon.
Still, it’s a sign of where smartphone makers are seeing the next wave of innovation.
‘Sea of sameness’
The smartphone market has hit something of a plateau over recent years, with many models not straying far from the standard form factor of a bar-shaped device.
Apple set the tone for what the devices in our pockets would look like when it launched the first iPhone in 2008. But smartphone makers are now trying to pull the market out of this so-called “sea of sameness.”
On Tuesday, British consumer tech startup Nothing launched its new Phone (3a), a 329-euro ($356.28) budget model with a quirky design and LED light system that lights up when you get calls or notifications.
Nothing co-founder Akis Evangelidis — who is planning a move to India as the startup plans an aggressive expansion push in the country — told CNBC the company is trying to shake up the smartphone market with something more fun and unique.
Using the Indian market as an example, Evangelidis said: “People are walking away from pure functional needs when it comes to product. They aspire to brands that have more of an emotional benefit, and I think that’s where the opportunity is.”
Innovating on display
However, although smartphone makers have been aggressively working to release new folding devices, the category remains a relatively niche area of the market.
Plus, folding phones can represent a big jump for the average consumer.
For one, they tend to be bulkier than non-folding phones because of the additional screen. And they’re not cheap, either. According to data from market research firm IDC, the average selling price of folding phones is nearly three times higher than that of normal smartphones — roughly $1,218 vs. $421 for non-folding phones.
While the foldable phone market grew 6.4% year-over-year to 19.3 million units, the category “represents only 1.6% of total global shipments,” according to Francisco Jeronimo, vice president EMEA for devices at IDC.
Nevertheless, this year at MWC, phone companies showed they’re getting better at developing folding phones that can better cater to everyday users.
For example, Oppo showed off its new Find N5 device this week. It only has two screens, but it’s a lot thinner than competing folding phones, such as Samsung’s Galaxy Fold 6.
Samsung currently holds the leading position in the global foldables segment. In 2024, it commanded a 32.9% share of the market. Huawei was close behind, with 23.1%, while Motorola was the third-biggest folding phone manufacturer with 17% market share.
And despite the punchy prices, these companies are betting consumers will be willing to pay for a more premium-grade experience.