Markets
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Luke Kawa

AppLovin surges as the ad tech company prepares Q4 “bazooka” in what CEO says will be “a fun quarter”

AppLovin, which initially failed to impress traders with a revenue beat and better-than-expected Q3 sales guidance, is now on fire, up double digits as of 10:50 a.m. ET.

And that’s in large part because CEO Adam Foroughi said the real “fun” starts in Q4, when the company will open its self-service ad portal on a referral basis to onboard new advertisers and boost its footprint in areas outside of gaming, with a full-scale launch planned for the first half of 2026.

Here’s what Foroughi said (emphasis added):

“We think our advertisers are going to cause an onboarding moment that’ll be multiples bigger than what we were manually curating. Now it’s not necessarily true that we’re going to take our queue that’s built over the last year and just say, everyone, you’re in.

They’re still going to have to get invited to get into the platform. So it will be still curated onboarding. The reality is, Q4 is going to end up being a fun quarter. You’ve got the advertiser cohort that we didn’t have last Q4 that was growing in the quarter to the point where we reported huge numbers and then had huge numbers in Q1, but we’re going to have those advertisers primed and ready to go for the full Q4.

We’re going to have those advertisers inviting their friends onto our platform in Q4, and we’re going to be opening up international all at the same time. So there’s going to be a lot of fun moments, moments for us and our customers in this e-commerce or web-based category that’ll set sort of a new baseline for that business. And then obviously, then we will go through hopefully another inflection when we really truly open up the platform and try to get into a state where we’re more stable long-term.”

Morgan Stanley analyst Matthew Cost boosted his price target on the stock to $480 from $460. “We are fundamentally bullish on the self-serve initiative, which the company made clear will simplify onboarding and workflows, widen the funnel of non-gaming advertisers, open the product to international markets, and put the infrastructure in place to allow AI-generated ads and agentic support over time,” he wrote.

Bank of America analyst Omar Dessouky described the messaging around this catalyst as AppLovin loading a fourth-quarter “bazooka.” However, he also lowered his expected multiple for the company while keeping the price target unchanged thanks to a big boost to earnings estimates, citing “execution risk” associated with this launch.

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US-POLITICS-DIPLOMACY

Stocks soar as US and Iran reach deal to open Strait of Hormuz, end the war

The details of the framework for peace are not yet available.

J. Edward Moreno14m
markets
Helena Cheng

AMD shares climb on double Citi upgrade to “buy” with $575 price target

AMD’s shares are rising in premarket trading following a double upgrade from Citi. Citi analyst Atif Malik raised AMD’s investment rating to “buy” from “neutral” and boosted the bank’s 12-month price target to $575 from $460 per share, per Barron’s.

Malik argued that the broader market currently misprices AMD by looking at it primarily as a CPU producer, underestimating its massive GPU potential. Citi says that AMD is uniquely “poised to win the lion’s share” of Meta’s customized graphics chip business. Meta is leaning into AMD’s custom MI450 chips, which deliver a lower total cost of ownership compared to buying traditional off-the-shelf merchant hardware, according to Investing.com.

Citi highlighted a massive multiyear deal between the two tech giants involving a 160 million-share common stock warrant. As the first phase ramps up through 2027, Citi expects each gigawatt of data center infrastructure to translate into roughly $15 billion in revenue. Consequently, Citi hiked its 2027 AMD AI sales forecast to $33 billion (up 137% year over year) and projects GPU sales to reach $50.8 billion by 2028.

CEO Lisa Su recently delivered an optimistic demand forecast, predicting that the global market for CPUs will grow by more than 35% annually over the next five years. The chipmaker delivered a robust Q1 earnings report back in May that beat Wall Street expectations across key data center segments.

markets
Claire Yubin Oh

Astera Labs, CoreWeave, Nebius, Rocket Lab, Teradyne rise on Nasdaq 100 Index inclusion announcement

Tech stocks Astera Labs, CoreWeave, Nebius, Rocket Lab, and Teradyne have risen as much as 8.9% in premarket trading on Friday, thanks in part to Nasdaq’s announcement that the five companies will join its flagship Nasdaq 100 Index starting June 22.

As part of the index operator’s quarterly rebalance, which affects some $1.4 trillion in assets within the Nasdaq 100 ecosystem, the companies will replace Charter, Zscaler, Cognizant, Insmed, and Verisk — relatively slow-growth legacy businesses that have lingered around the bottom of the index in market cap terms of late. Most of those stocks slipped slightly on the news.

With CoreWeave and Nebius as two of the major players in the neocloud space, and Astera Labs and Teradyne specializing in making AI hardware and semiconductors, the latest additions reflect how the index is upping its exposure to the AI infrastructure stack. Back in December, Nasdaq also added AI data storage names Seagate Technology Holdings and Western Digital, as well as AI server manager Monolithic Power Systems, as part of its quarterly rebalance.

markets
Jon Keegan

Adobe beats on Q2 earnings, revenue; CFO to step down

Adobe reported fiscal Q2 results Thursday, beating analysts’ estimates for revenue and earnings, as its stock plumbed its lowest levels since 2019.

For Q2 2026, the creative software company posted:

  • Revenues of $6.62 billion (estimate: $6.45 billion).

  • Adjusted earnings per share of $5.96 (estimate: $5.82).

  • Annual recurring revenue of $27.1 billion (estimate: $26.6 billion).

  • Subscription revenue of $6.42 billion (estimate: $6.27 billion).

  • Remaining performance obligations of $22.27 billion (estimate: $21.86 billion).

The company also said its CFO, Dan Durn, would step down next week “to pursue a new professional opportunity.” And it boosted its full-year guidance for earnings and revenue.

Shares fell 5.5% in after-hours trading.

Adobe is feeling the pressure from AI, as the April release of Anthropic’s Claude Design threatens the company’s core design software business. Shares have tanked lately, with the stock down by nearly half over the past 12 months, putting it at levels not seen in years.

Last quarter, Adobe announced that CEO Shantanu Narayen, who had been at the company for 18 years, would be leaving after his successor was appointed. Today, Adobe announced that CFO Dan Durn would also be leaving the company — this month.

Adobe announced a $25 billion stock buyback in April, which gave the stock a boost. The company said it repurchased about 8.5 million shares during the quarter.

In a press release, Narayen said:

“Adobe delivered record revenue of $6.62 billion in Q2 reflecting strong AI-driven demand across our customer groups and we are raising our full-year fiscal 2026 revenue and non-GAAP EPS targets on the strength of that performance.”

Tasha Matsumoto
6/11/26
Stocks climb, oil drops as Trump calls off strikes on Iran

President Trump posted on Truth Social that he was calling off impending air strikes against Iran and told reporters in the Oval Office that the US and Iran will sign a peace deal soon. Oil plunged on the news.

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