AMD Chair and CEO Lisa Su speaks at the AMD Keynote address during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) on January 4, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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Chip stocks dipped Wednesday, after AMD‘s disappointing revenue forecast raised concern that fragility in the PC market and slower spending from businesses may be poised to continue.
AMD shares dropped 7. Marvell fell almost 6%, Nvidia slid close to 5% and Intel and Texas Instruments each declined more than 3%, falling more than the broader tech market.
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For the third quarter, AMD said late Tuesday that it expects $5.7 billion in sales, while analysts were looking for revenue of $5.81 billion. At the same time, the company said a “weaker PC market” dragged second-quarter revenue down 54% in its client segment. Sales in the data center business fell 11% in part because of soft enterprise demand, AMD said.
Semiconductor companies led a decline in tech stocks, as the market was hit by Fitch Ratings’ downgrade of the United States’ long-term foreign currency issuer default rating from AAA to AA+. Fitch attributed the downgrade to “expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years,” an erosion of governance and a growing general debt burden.
The Nasdaq dropped 2.1% on Wednesday, its second-worst day of the year.
Following AMD’s earnings report, CEO Lisa Su told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” in an interview on Wednesday that the company is coming out of a “volatile cycle” for PCs, but she said AMD expects to see growth through the second half of the year. Analysts at Jefferies reiterated their buy rating on the stock in a note to clients and pointed to PC recovery materializing.
AMD is one of the few companies making high-end graphics processing units (GPUs) needed for artificial intelligence, and analysts are watching to see if its server chips can take market share away from top rival Intel.
“The idea is that your PC should be your productivity tool to help you really organize all aspects of your life, and generative AI is going to be a big piece of that,” Su told CNBC.
She said AMD is working closely with partners like Microsoft to leverage AI and make the computers more productive going forward.
During the quarter, AMD announced a new chip that’s intended to build and run the kind of AI models that are at the heart of applications like OpenAI’s popular chatbot ChatGPT. AMD said the MI300X chip was currently being provided to customers for sampling and that production would ramp in the fourth quarter.
The Texas-based space company said in an updated prospectus Monday that it’s planning to sell about 16.2 million shares. The offering could raise up to $631.8 million.
Earlier this month, Firefly filed its plans to go public on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “FLY.”
Its debut comes amid a renewed push in the space race, as billionaire-led companies such as Elon Musk‘s SpaceX funnel more money into space activities and startups try their luck at the public markets.
Space tech firm Voyager went public in June, while reusable rocket developer Innovative Rocket Technologies said it plans to debut through a $400 million special purpose acquisition company merger.
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Firefly’s public market launch also coincides with a revival in IPO activity as debilitating interest rates and an overhang from President Donald Trump‘s tariff plans begin to clear. Design software company Figma is slated to go public this week after raising its range.
Firefly makes rockets, space tugs and lunar landers, including satellite launching rockets known as Alpha. At the end of March, the company reported a sixfold jump in revenue from $8.3 million a year ago to $55.9 million.
The company also reported a net loss of about $60.1 million, up from a loss of $52.8 million a year ago, and said its backlog totaled about $1.1 billion.
Some of Firefly’s major backers include AE Industrial Partners, which led an early investing round in the company. Defense contractor Northrop Grumman invested $50 million in the startup this May, and Firefly says it has collaborated with Lockheed Martin, L3Harris and NASA.
Elena Nadolinski, founder and CEO at Iron Fish, and Dylan Field, CEO and co-founder of Figma, attend the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley Media Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 7, 2022.
The company now expects shares to go for $30 to 32 each, up from the range of $25 to $28 that it disclosed on July 21.
The new range, announced in a regulatory filing, suggests Figma would be worth $17.6 billion to $18.8 billion on a fully diluted basis.
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That would still be below the $20 billion total that Adobe had offered when it announced plans to acquire Figma in 2022. The deal fell apart after regulators pushed back on competitive grounds.
Figma is among the most valuable privately held technology companies.
Financial technology companies Chime and Circle went public in June, and CoreWeave shares debuted in March. Circle and CoreWeave shares have since more than doubled in price.
The Huawei flagship store and the Apple flagship store at Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street in Shanghai, China, Sept. 2, 2024.
Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images
Huawei reclaimed the top spot in China’s smartphone market in the second quarter of the year, while Apple returned to growth in the country — one of its most critical markets — data released by technology market analyst firm Canalys showed on Monday.
Huawei shipped 12.2 million smartphones in China in the three months ended June, a rise of 15% year on year — equating to 18% market share. It’s the first time Huawei has been the biggest player by market share in China since the first quarter of 2024, according to Canalys.
Apple, meanwhile, shipped 10.1 million smartphones in the quarter in China, up 4% year on year and ranking fifth. It is the first time Apple has recorded growth in China since the fourth quarter of 2023, Canalys said.
Shipments represent the number of devices sent to retailers. They do no equate directly to sales but are a gauge of demand.
The numbers come ahead of Apple’s quarterly earnings release this week, with investors watching the company’s performance in China, a market where the Cupertino giant has faced significant challenges, including intense competition from Huawei and other local players such as Xiaomi.
Huawei, which made a comeback at the end of 2023 after its smartphone business was crippled by U.S. sanctions, has eaten away at Apple’s share.
Apple’s return to growth in China will be a welcome sign for investors. The U.S. tech giant “strategically adjusted its pricing” for the iPhone 16 series in China, which helped it grow, Canalys said. Chinese e-commerce firms discounted Apple’s iPhone 16 models during the quarter. And Apple itself also increased trade-in prices for some iPhone models.
Meanwhile, competition in China has intensified. Huawei has aggressively launched various smartphones in the past year and has started to roll out HarmonyOS 5, its self-developed operating system, across various devices. It is a rival to Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.
“This move is expected to accelerate the expansion of its independent ecosystem’s user base, while also placing greater demands on system compatibility and user experience,” Lucas Zhong, analyst at Canalys, said in a press release.