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Luke Kawa

POET Technologies soars as Marvell’s acquisition of Celestial AI validates its potential role in the AI boom


POET Technologies is ramping in premarket trading as investors believe that Marvell Technology’s acquisition of Celestial AI validates its technology and bolsters its sales outlook.

Along with its Q3 results released after the close on Tuesday, Marvell announced that it was acquiring Celestial AI for at least $3.25 billion in cash and stock, an amount that could go up by an additional $2.25 billion if Celestial hits certain revenue targets within roughly two years.

During Marvell’s earnings call, CEO Matt Murphy raved about Celestial AI’s ability to play a crucial supporting role in the AI boom:

Copper-based interconnects used in today's scale-up systems are approaching their fundamental limits in reach and bandwidth, creating compelling need for optical solutions. Celestial AI's photonic fabric technology platform was purpose-built for this inflection. It enables large AI clusters that scale both within and across racks using a high-bandwidth, low-latency, low-power and cost-effective optical fabric. This breakthrough enables a true optical solution with greater than two times the power efficiency of copper interconnects, but with far longer reach and significantly higher bandwidth.

What’s good for Celestial AI is presumably good for POET.

POET and Celestial AI, are, loosely speaking, in different parts of the same business: speeding the transmission of data using photonics. POET is more upstream, offering the technology that enables these solutions, while Celestial AI applies this technology to its system for use in data centers.

Celestial is listed as a “customer” of POET in previous annual reports. Back in 2022, the two firms announced that POET’s key technology, its optical interposer, would be supplied to Celestial AI.

“The customized Optical Interposer platform that we have co-developed with POET is among the most advanced of its kind in high-speed computing,” David Lazovsky, founder and CEO of Celestial AI, said at the time.

Retail trader interest in POET has certainly been re-piqued. As of 7:49 a.m. ET, the ticker is among the most-mentioned on the r/wallstreetbets subreddit over the past 12 hours, per SwaggyStocks.

SwaggyStocks POET
Source: SwaggyStocks

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Luke Kawa

GitLab slumps as Q4 guidance underwhelms and management issues erroneous full-year outlook

GitLab is sinking in early trading Wednesday after a management oopsie added to the sting of its third-quarter results released after the close on Tuesday.

While the software development company exceeded expectations on the top and bottom lines, its Q4 forecast of adjusted net income per share from $0.22 to $0.23 on sales of $251 million to $252 million failed to impress, as the midpoints of these ranges were virtually in-line to a touch below the Street’s view.

Furthermore, the totality of its guidance didn’t add up: in its first press release, management said adjusted net income per share would come in between $0.95 and $0.96.

Given Q1 adjusted net income per share came in at $0.17, Q2 was $0.24, and these Q3 results showed $0.25, that implied its Q4 guidance should have been $0.29 to $0.30 to be consistent with the full-year view. Late on Tuesday night, GitLab corrected this error, stating that its full-year view was actually for $0.88 to $0.89 in adjusted net income per share.

That certainly didn’t help improve sentiment on the company, given that Wall Street was already a little negative on the details of its results and the outlook.

“GitLab's softening net revenue retention rates and lower overall customer additions highlight execution challenges and reinforce our concerns about AI-driven headwinds to seat growth and the pace of AI feature-led upselling and monetization,” writes Bloomberg Intelligence senior technology analyst Sunil Rajgopal.

GitLab’s net retention rate slipped to 119% in Q3, below estimates for 119.8%.

The stock is seeing a flurry of pessimism across Wall Street this morning, with Mizuho lowering its price target to $47 from $52, KeyBanc reducing its to $49 from $53, Goldman Sachs cutting to $42 from $48, Wells Fargo trimming to $45 from $50, and Barclays and Truist edging theirs lower to $42 from $44.

markets
Claire Yubin Oh

Zara owner Inditex soars after reporting strong Q3 and November sales

Inditex is up 8% in early trading in Madrid, the stock’s biggest intraday jump in five years, after the world’s largest listed clothing retailer reported robust November and third-quarter results on Wednesday.

The Zara and Pull&Bear owner reported sales rose 8.4% at constant currencies to hit €9.8 billion ($11.41 billion) in the third quarter that ended October 31. The company also said that currency-adjusted sales growth of 10.6% in November, marking a strong start to the retailers’ Q4 — one which includes the crucial Black Friday discounting period.

In what is usually the company’s most profitable period of the year, as many of its products are sold at full price, CEO Oscar Garcia Macieras commented in a call with analysts that “in the nine months of 2025, we have generated a strong performance, with sales growth in a complex market environment while maintaining very satisfactory levels of profitability.” Gross profit for the third quarter grew 6.2% to €6.1 billion ($7.1 billion), hitting a 62% gross margin.

markets
Jon Keegan

CrowdStrike beats on Q3 revenue and earnings

CrowdStrike eked out beats on both earnings and revenue for the third quarter, while also raising its full-year guidance.

The cybersecurity company reported earnings of $0.96 per share, beating analysts’ consensus estimate of $0.94 per share.

The company saw $1.23 billion in sales for the quarter, up 22% year on year, beating analysts’ expectation of $1.21 billion in sales. The company reported a net loss of about $34 million.

Subscription revenue was $1.17 billion, up 21% year on year.

Shares were little changed in after-hours trading. The stock is up nearly 50% since the start of the year.

The company’s annual recurring revenue reached $4.92 billion as of October 31, up 23% year on year. The analyst consensus was $4.895 billion.

The company raised its fiscal year 2026 guidance for revenue to between $4.8 billion to $4.81 billion (previously $4.75 billion to $4.81 billion), and upped its outlook for adjusted earnings per share to a range of $3.70 to $3.72 (previously $3.60 to $3.72).

Burt Podbere, CrowdStrike’s CFO, wrote in the press release:

“We delivered outstanding third quarter results, exceeding expectations across all guided metrics. Total revenue growth accelerated to 22% year-over-year, and we delivered record cash flow from operations of $398 million and record Q3 free cash flow of $296 million. We are capitalizing on the AI-driven demand environment as customers consolidate on the Falcon platform, driving our pipeline to an all-time high.”

markets
Luke Kawa

Marvell Technology soars after CEO targets $10 billion in revenues next year

Despite Marvell Technology initially falling in after-hours trading after the chip company posted Q3 results modestly ahead of estimates and Q4 guidance in line with expectations, it’s now turned those losses into massive gains thanks to positive commentary on next year’s sales outlook. Shares are up almost 10% as of 5:20 a.m. ET.

On the earnings call, CEO Matt Murphy said that sales could eclipse $10 billion in its upcoming fiscal year, while analysts had penciled in a forecast below $9.5 billion.

That solid anticipated pick-up in sales is being driven by Marvell’s custom chip division, where Murphy touted recent customer wins including an “emerging hyperscaler.”

“We expect our custom business, roughly a quarter of our overall data center revenue, to grow by at least 20% next year,” he said.

While custom chips sales have been a relatively lumpy line item for Marvell, Murphy doesn’t think that will be the case going forward, saying that there won’t be any more “air pockets.”

The Q3 results:

  • Net revenue: $2.075 billion (compared to estimates for $2.06 billion)

  • Adjusted earnings per share: $0.76 (estimate: $0.74)

For Q4, management offered guidance for net revenues to come in at $2.2 billion (plus or minus 5%) with adjusted EPS of $0.79 (plus or minus $0.05). That’s virtually bang in line with Wall Street’s call for $2.19 billion and $0.79, respectively.

Along with these results, Marvell announced plans to buy Celestial AI, a company that uses light to move data between chips, for at least $3.25 billion in cash and stock. The purchase price could go up by as much as $2.25 billion if Celestial’s cumulative revenues reach at least $2 billion by the end of Marvell’s fiscal 2029 (roughly speaking, calendar year 2028).

The chip stock has been on a solid run recently, thanks in large part to a wave of investor enthusiasm over custom chips spurred by the launch of Google’s Gemini 3. Marvell works with Amazon as a codesigning partner for its custom chips, including providing connectivity infrastructure for the Trainium3 model, which was publicly launched on Tuesday.

That being said, Marvell has been one of the worst chip stocks this year, and is still down around 7.5% for the year so far.

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Dennis Rodman (R) of the Chicago Bulls grabs a rebound from Karl Malone (L) of the Utah Jazz 01 June during the second half of game one of the NBA Finals at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois.

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