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AppLovin gets new Street-high price target from BofA, as it’s “likely to become a required channel” for DTC e-commerce companies

AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi said the real “fun” starts today, as the company opens its self-service ad portal on a referral basis to onboard new advertisers.

After researching about 400 of its direct-to-consumer (DTC) e-commerce customers, Bank of America is convinced that AppLovin is “likely to become a required channel in calendar year 2026.”

Analyst Omar Dessouky upped his price target on the ad tech company to $860 — the highest on Wall Street, per analysts polled by Bloomberg — from $580.

During AppLovin’s most recent earnings call, CEO Adam Foroughi said the real “fun” starts in Q4 (today!), as the company opens its self-service ad portal on a referral basis to onboard new advertisers in a bid to boost its footprint in areas outside of gaming. A full-scale launch of this portal is planned for the first half of 2026.

Dessouky thinks the company will get 4,000 large advertisers, primarily in the apparel, beauty & fitness, home & garden, and health & wellness industries, through this new endeavor.

“Once launched, we expect eCommerce ad targeting models to improve rapidly because (1) of the high degree of intent captured via 30-60 second ads, (2) the high differentiation within categories leads to high signal capture,” he wrote.

BofA new customers for AppLovin

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GE Vernova declines after analyst downgrade of top AI energy trade

Power turbine maker GE Vernova is down midday after RBC analysts cut their rating on the stock from “outperform” (essentially a “buy”) to “sector perform” (essentially a “hold”), suggesting that long-term earnings expectations for the company might have gotten too optimistic.

RBC’s Christopher Dendrinos wrote:

“Our longer-term expectations are more conservative than consensus expectations which we think could be over appreciating the cadence of revenue growth in the power segment in 2029-2030. We believe investors are already fully valuing the company on the longer-term 2030 outlook and there could be more limited opportunity for positive rate of change in current expectations.”

Dendrinos argues that the Street’s expectations for when the river of payments will materialize from the service contracts GE sells to maintain the newly installed turbines is too soon. He wrote that it will take a much longer cycle:

“Mgmt sees an opportunity to double the installed base of baseload power over the next 10 years which should support significant rev growth and stronger margins (we estimate gas service margins over 30%).

However, the first major service cycle typically occurs ~3-4 years after installation so the benefit of service price increases and new LTSAs are unlikely to begin to benefit the income statement until later in the decade and will be a gradual increase.”

Earlier in the year, GE Vernova was a top performer as the AI data center trade boomed. It was up roughly 100% for the year in late July, making it the third-best gainer in the S&P 500 for the year.

It has stalled since then, though it remains up more than 80% in 2025.

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GEO Group rises on ICE contract announcement

Federal immigration and prison operator GEO Group popped after announcing late Tuesday that it has won a new contract from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to continue in its role as a vendor of electronic monitoring, case management, and supervision services under the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program.

(That’s a program that keeps track of people as they undergo the immigration review process.)

Since the election, GEO Group has been one of a number of stocks whose business — or leadership — is seen as closely tied to the Trump administration, or set to benefit from White House policy changes.

GEO Group is up 150% since President Trump was elected last November.

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Tempus AI shares rise following executive order promoting AI to produce solutions for pediatric cancer

Shares of AI medical diagnostics company Tempus AI have shot up over 5% today. The stock is up over 150% for the year.

Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order to boost the use of AI to “produce meaningful solutions to pediatric, adolescent, and young adulthood cancer,” which may be fueling the stock’s rise.

Last week, the company announced FDA approval of its Tempus xR IVD device, an RNA sequencing tool that allows doctors to tailor therapies for cancer patients.

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Plug Power soars on bullish options activity as it delivers first electrolyzer for green hydrogen project

Hydrogen fuel cell company Plug Power is enjoying massive gains and a lot of love in the options market Wednesday after the company announced that it delivered the first electrolyzer to a refinery in Portugal.

“This project, Plug’s largest worldwide, will produce up to 15,000 tons of renewable hydrogen per year, replacing 20% of the grey hydrogen currently used at the Sines Refinery,” per the company’s press release. “This switch will reduce the Refinery’s greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 110,000 tons per year (Scope 1 and 2, CO2e).”

As of 11:03 a.m. ET, over 146,000 call options in Plug have changed hands, already running hotter than the 20-day average of 132,328 for the full session. Activity is more than tilted to the bull side — it’s completely lopsided. Over 11 call options have traded for every one put.

Plug call options that expire in mid-January with a strike price of $2 and contracts with strike prices of $3 and $2.5 that expire this Friday are seeing especially elevated trading activity.

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