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Roku shares stream higher after Guggenheim hits the “buy” button on the stock

Roku is now in nearly half of all US households with broadband.

Nia Warfield

Roku shares leapt 6% Wednesday afternoon after Guggenheim doubled down on its “buy” rating for the streaming TV company.

Roku is now in more than half of US broadband homes and making big moves in Mexico, where it’s in over 40% of broadband homes. While Roku no longer shares quarterly household streaming numbers, Guggenheim forecasts the tech company will reach 92 million streaming households globally and 65 million in the US by the end of the first quarter.

Roku is seeing growing demand for The Roku Channel, with half of US broadband households kicking off their TV time on its home screen. To keep the momentum going, the company’s expanding third-party partnerships to ramp up advertising demand. It’s starting to work: in Q4, Roku’s platform revenue — which includes advertising, content, and subscription sales — topped $1 billion for the first time.

Despite maintaining the buy rating, Guggenheim lowered its 12-month price target on the stock from $115 to $100 per share, based on “the contraction in the relative peer multiple.” Even still, the $100 target implies a 40% boost from current stock levels. Looking ahead, Guggenheim says Roku is “well-positioned” to reach its 2026 operating profit goal. Roku shares are up nearly 12% over the past year.

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Citi upgrades Palantir to “buy,” citing recent conversations with CIOs

Citi analysts hit the buy button on Palantir Technologies Monday, citing a strong outlook for growth both in Palantir’s large government contracting and defense business as well as its rapidly growing commercial division, which sells software to corporations to help them better use AI technology.

“Our upgrade is premised on our view that 2026 is poised to be another year of significant positive estimate revisions, with recent CIO [chief information officer] + industry conversations suggesting AI budget and use cases are accelerating in the enterprise. We also see significant tailwinds in the Government driven by accelerating defense budgets and modernization urgency.”

The bank, which had a “neutral” rating on the stock since February 2024, also cited chatter at its recent IT software conference, where participants talked up the cost savings generated by Palantir’s AI Platform software and noted that its Q4 IT survey on software budgets showed an incremental rise in budgets “especially for dedicated AI workloads and data project prioritization.”

“We expect PLTR, with its Foundry and AIP platform, to be one of the key Data Analytics/ AI vendors that could see further tailwind into numbers,” Citi analysts wrote.

Palantir is expected to report Q4 results on February 18.

But it’s an open question whether the surging growth Citi now sees for the company has already been priced in for the stock. The shares have risen close to 1,000% over the last two years, pushing standard measures of valuation to arguably lunatic levels.

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Chinese food delivery stocks soar as regulatory probe into price wars may save them from themselves

If there’s one thing Chinese companies are known for, it’s ruthless competition on price to make sure the nation’s products are attractive on global markets. Oftentimes, this comes with implicit or explicit state support for favored industries, which draws the ire of other countries.

Production > profitability is a pretty good shorthand for how China attempts to conquer tradable goods (see: electric vehicles). However, when it comes to consumer-oriented services, policymakers clearly don’t feel the same way.

Alibaba, Meituan, andJD.com are all soaring after the Chinese State Council’s anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition committee said it’s investigating the food delivery sector over practices that are potentially distorting the market and weighing on brick-and-mortar firms.

These tech giants have been investing heavily in their food delivery capabilities, including via subsidies and incentives. Effectively, the market reaction here is that traders believe regulators are saving these companies from themselves.

A commentary in the state-run People’s Daily published midyear 2025, when JD.com announced plans to bolster its food delivery business, argued that there will be no “winners” in these price wars, which would lead to irrational consumption.

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