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Yiwen Lu

Stocks of mortgage giants rise on privatization prospects

Shares of Freddie Mac jumped nearly 40% at market open on Wednesday. Fannie Mae stock rose about 30% and were the top-performing US stocks in the premarket. The two major government-sponsored enterprises, which have been under the control of the Federal Housing Finance Agency since the 2008 financial crisis, are set to benefit from a Trump presidency.

Republicans have hoped that Trump would fulfill a longstanding GOP goal to privatize the two companies, which he attempted to do in 2019. However, Democrats worry that doing so would add to the already high mortgage rates in the most unaffordable housing market in decades.

In a note, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Ben Elliott said that getting the GSEs out of government conservatorship “remains at best a 2026-27 prospect,” and is contingent on the administration’s pick of Treasury secretary and Federal Housing Finance Agency director.

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Akamai climbs to highest level since 2000 after reportedly securing Anthropic as a customer

Akamai’s billion-dollar AI infrastructure customer is Anthropic, Bloomberg reported on Friday. The cloud services company extended gains to trade up over 25% following the news.

On Thursday, the company announced a seven-year, $1.8 billion commitment from a “leading frontier model provider.”

Anthropic has been on a mad scramble to boost compute capacity after facing widespread complaints about Claude usage limits and seeing OpenAI position its accumulation of computing power as a competitive advantage.

In a little over a month, Anthropic has struck or expanded deals with CoreWeave, Amazon, Google, Broadcom, as well as xAI (through SpaceX).

As part of that xAI pact, Anthropic announced that it would be increasing usage limits for paying customers.

Anthropic has been on a mad scramble to boost compute capacity after facing widespread complaints about Claude usage limits and seeing OpenAI position its accumulation of computing power as a competitive advantage.

In a little over a month, Anthropic has struck or expanded deals with CoreWeave, Amazon, Google, Broadcom, as well as xAI (through SpaceX).

As part of that xAI pact, Anthropic announced that it would be increasing usage limits for paying customers.

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NuScale Power falls on disappointing drop in Q1 sales

NuScale shares are dropping in the early trading session after it released Q1 earnings yesterday after the bell that are failing to rejuvenate any excitement in the once high-flying, early-stage nuclear energy company.

The company announced Q1 revenue of just $560,000, well below the $10.5 million estimate, with sales down materially year over year thanks to old licensing and design deals that have since been completed.

The lack of financial progress has made NuScale Power more of a momentum-driven way to play the intersection of clean energy and AI infrastructure, particularly as hyperscalers and data center operators search for long-term power sources.

“The demand for reliable, carbon-free power has never been greater, and NuScale is the only SMR technology provider with a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved design, an established supply chain and NPM components currently in production for commercial use to meet this essential need,” said John Hopkins, NuScale president and CEO. “We are building the infrastructure that this pivotal moment requires.”

Analysts at Goldman Sachs trimmed their price target to $9 from $10 in the wake of this report.

The company ended this quarter with cash, cash equivalents, and short- and long-term investments of $1.0 billion. The stock has dropped more than 25% year to date.

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Nintendo falls, will hike Switch 2 price amid memory crunch

Gaming giant Nintendo reported the results for its fourth quarter, which ended in March, on Friday morning. Its US-traded ADR fell nearly 4% in premarket trading.

Most notably, Nintendo announced it will raise the price of its Switch 2 console in the US by $50 to $499.99 in September. Investors have been waiting for Nintendo to join its rivals Sony and Microsoft in boosting the price of its flagship console, but the company had thus far been unwilling to do so this early in the Switch 2’s life cycle.

Nintendo shares have fallen about 45% over the past 12 months, as the company has been hit by tariffs and costs have increased due to AI’s memory demand and higher global shipping rates amid the war in Iran.

For its fiscal 2026, Nintendo reported:

  • 2.313 trillion yen ($14.8 billion) in total revenue, compared to estimates of 2.31 trillion yen ($14.78 billion) from Wall Street analysts polled by FactSet.

  • 19.86 million Switch 2 sales, compared to its 19 million forecast.

For the fiscal year ahead (which will end in March 2027), Nintendo forecast 16.5 million Switch 2 sales. The company is guiding for 2.050 trillion yen ($13.1 billion) in sales for the full year, compared to Wall Street estimates of 2.5 trillion yen ($16.1 billion).

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