Track semiconductors, computing infrastructure and the technology cycle.
Applied Materials plans to increase its stake in Besi through an accelerated share purchase agreement and expand their collaboration into new interconnect architectures. Wells Fargo believes this aligns with the company’s direction of expanding its advanced packaging business.
KLA’s revenue and earnings per share both exceeded market consensus in the September quarter, and the midpoint of its December-quarter revenue guidance reached $4.7 billion. China was the largest source of revenue in the quarter and also a significant risk exposure highlighted by Evercore ISI.
The company’s third-quarter revenue and operating profit were 14% and 8% below market consensus, respectively, while bonding equipment sales fell forty percent quarter on quarter. Morgan Stanley believes growth in HBM output may not lead to a corresponding increase in investment in new bonding equipment.
Apple plans to launch basic AI features powered by Qwen in China in December 2026. Citi believes the system-level entry point could help Alibaba expand model usage and potentially generate cloud inference demand, although the initial range of devices and features will be limited.
Vertiv’s third-quarter revenue and profit exceeded market expectations, and organic orders more than doubled year over year. Evercore ISI believes capacity coming online and improved backlog execution could drive 2027 growth above the previous framework; however, quarterly revenue also benefited from the recognition of projects delayed from the prior quarter.
In the third quarter of 2026, Fastprint’s net profit far exceeded Nomura Orient International’s expectations. The firm raised its earnings forecasts for the next three years while cutting its target price from 39 yuan to 37 yuan.
Roblox’s peak concurrent users fell 7% week over week, with its most popular games continuing to decline. JPMorgan believes fourth-quarter bookings guidance may be conservative, but growth investments and margin pressure continue to constrain its rating.
Since October, consensus forecasts for the five companies’ combined 2028 capital spending have risen 18%; meanwhile, software companies are beginning to see AI efficiency gains, but ServiceNow’s overall growth has yet to accelerate alongside its AI business.
Product price increases and mass production of new products lifted the gross margin in the first three quarters, but third-quarter revenue and profit fell quarter on quarter. Nomura Orient International cut its earnings forecasts and price target while remaining optimistic about growth from new products.
Revenue growth is accelerating at the three major cloud providers and some business margins are rising, but spending on data-center construction comes first, putting pressure on tech giants’ free cash flow. Nomura believes financing can ease short-term cash pressure, while compute oversupply remains a long-term concern.
On 2 November, Market Logic focuses on AI content and games: combined active users of AI motion-comic dramas overseas have surpassed 150 million, Tokens are being trialled in livestream retail, and Shadow of the Blade Zero sold over 4 million copies across all platforms within 72 hours of release.
Lumentum’s quarterly margin and next-quarter guidance exceeded market expectations, but the stock-for-stock deal ties its valuation to Marvell’s share price and the progress of the transaction. Bernstein is positive on the fundamentals but believes the market-implied probability of completion is too high.
The 2 November announcement roundup focuses on three companies: Dongshan Precision disclosed progress on its share repurchases, Yuanjie Semiconductor is shifting more capacity toward CW light sources, and Chunchiu Electronic plans to repurchase shares and expand its liquid cooling business.
DataEye expects the AI short-drama market to exceed 40 billion yuan in 2026. Falling production costs are driving supply growth, while platform revenue sharing, incentives and licensing income are beginning to become competitive priorities for content providers.
Robot training requires large amounts of data from real-world scenarios, and different collection methods involve trade-offs in quality, cost, and scale. Zheshang Securities forecasts that the midstream data collection market will reach 174.1 billion yuan by 2030; the capital increase and shareholding restructuring of the Hangzhou embodied AI pilot base are expected to be completed by the end of 2026.
Shadow of the Blade Zero sold more than 4 million copies within 72 hours of release. China Post Securities believes that Chinese developers’ experience in mobile game development, global publishing and user operations could transfer to 3A games.
Elon Musk predicts that computing capacity in low Earth orbit will surpass terrestrial capacity by 2029, while Changjiang Securities sees potential for space-based computing to break through from 0 to 1; in automotive chips, NXP plans to adjust prices for some products in January 2027 because of rising costs.
Jefferies sees cloud providers’ backlogs and business growth continuing to rise, but expects capital spending to keep depressing free cash flow; borrowing costs for new cloud providers are also climbing.
Samsung SDI is expanding energy storage supplies in the US, while LG Energy Solution advances local capacity; solid-state and semi-solid-state batteries are at different stages of commercialization, and lithium prices have fallen sharply over the past month.
Kioxia expects some enterprise SSD shipments to be delayed until early 2027, resulting in fourth-quarter revenue growth below Goldman Sachs’ expectations for its Korean peers. However, its 2027 capacity is essentially sold out, and long-term agreements extend beyond 2028.
