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Luke Kawa

S&P 500 sets first record closing high of 2025

The S&P 500 put in a late rally to finish at an intraday and closing record high. The Nasdaq 100 gained 0.2%, while the Russell 2000 climbed 0.5%.

Every S&P 500 sector ETF traded to the upside, with healthcare and industrials leading the way higher. Tech and communication services were laggards.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF was down big early after weak guidance from SK Hynix weighed on the industry, but managed to nearly erase all losses.

GE Aerospace was the second-best performer in the S&P 500, soaring after posting its best quarterly results as a stand-alone entity.

EA, on the other hand, plummeted after slashing its guidance and was the worst-performing member of the benchmark index. American Airlines also had a very rough day after warning its first-quarter losses would be much larger than analysts had anticipated.

GameStop advanced on the heels of (what else?) a cryptic tweet from Roaring Kitty.

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Ford surges on bullish options activity, Morgan Stanley praises its battery business

Ford is on pace for its best trading day in seven months as bullish options activity propels the stock.

More than 226,000 call options have changed hands as of 11:25 a.m. ET on Wednesday, roughly 4x the 20-day average for a full session.

A Tuesday evening note from Morgan Stanley highlighted the company’s new energy business, Ford Energy, which will sell US-assembled battery systems to “utilities, data centers and large industrial and commercial customers in the United States.”

“We believe that there is a fairly high likelihood that Ford signs an [energy storage system] supply agreement with large commercial customers, and potentially hyperscalers, over the next few months,” said Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Percoco. The firm estimates that Ford Energy, which is licensing tech from Chinese battery giant CATL, could generate between $500 million and $600 million of run-rate earnings before interest and taxes at 20 gigawatt-hours of production.

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Tower Semiconductor soars on solid sales guidance with $1.3 billion in silicon photonics sales contracts

Tower Semiconductor is surging in early trading after the company released solid Q1 results and announced $1.3 billion in silicon photonics contract wins for 2027.

Q1 revenues of $413.6 million came in slightly better than Wall Street’s call, with adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.65 well ahead of the $0.56 estimate.

Looking forward, the company projects Q2 2026 revenue to reach an all-time record of $455 million (plus or minus 5%), above analysts’ expectations for $436.6 million.

Tower Semiconductor is benefiting from a surge in demand for AI infrastructure and is committed to its multiyear growth target in its silicon photonics business. Tower has already received $290 million in customer cash prepayments to reserve this capacity. Management said it has “an even larger contractual wafer commitment for 2028 for which additional associated prepayments are due by January 2027.”

“We are confident in our path toward achieving our model targets of $2.8 billion in annual revenue and $750 million in net profit in 2028,” said Russell Ellwanger, CEO of Tower Semiconductor.

Shares of Tower Semiconductor are up more than 80% year to date.

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Nebius soars on strong Q1 results, boost to full-year contracted power guidance

Nebius is soaring in early trading after reporting robust Q1 results and boosting its outlook for how much power it expects to have secured by year-end, a necessary ingredient for AI compute.

For the three months ended March 31, the neocloud reported:

  • Revenue of $399 million (compared to analyst estimates of $391.6 million).

  • Adjusted EBITDA of $129.5 million (estimate: $87.2 million).

Management raised their guidance for contracted power, or energy supply, to more than 4 gigawatts by year-end 2026 from a prior view in February of more than 3 gigawatts.

These results “strengthen the case for scaled AI infrastructure, in our view,” wrote Bloomberg Intelligence senior technology analyst Vasu Kasibhotla. “The 3.5x quarter-over-quarter pipeline increase in 1Q, a new 1.2 GW Pennsylvania facility and $6.3 billion raised in the quarter improve funding and capacity to execute.”

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Eos Energy Enterprises soars on joint venture with Cerberus for energy storage and Q1 revenue beat

Eos Energy Enterprises is surging in premarket trading after the company reported better-than-expected Q1 sales and unveiled a joint venture with a major alternative investment firm for battery energy storage projects.

The key Q1 numbers:

  • Revenue of $57 million (compared to analyst estimates of $54.27 million).

  • Adjusted earnings per share of $0.12 (estimate: a $0.20 loss), which was juiced by a noncash change in fair value based on the change in EOSE’s share price.

Concurrently with earnings, Eos and Cerberus Capital Management announced the formation of a joint venture called Frontier Power USA, which will be a stand-alone, purpose-built Independent Power Producer to be supplied through a 2-gigawatt-hour capacity reservation agreement with Eos.

“Frontier Power USA is expected to deploy this capacity across commercial and industrial applications, AI data centers, and utility-scale projects, drawing from a multi GWh project pipeline which is under active development,” per the press release.

To support the platforms launch, Cerberus has committed $100 million in equity, and, to underscore its confidence in Eos, extended its stock lockup agreement through the end of 2026. Eos plans to launch a rights offering to raise $150 million to support this JV.

“The market is telling us what it needs: long-duration storage that is safe, American-made, and financeable at scale,” said Joe Mastrangelo, CEO of Eos. “We have the technology, the manufacturing, the controls, and now, with Frontier Power USA, the planned capital to accelerate project deployment.”

Last month, Eos also announced a joint development agreement with Turbine-X Energy. The partnership focuses on deploying zinc-based battery storage solutions for AI hyperscale data centers, with a target capacity of up to 2 gigawatt-hours beginning in 2027.

For the full year in 2026, Eos expects to achieve revenue between $300 million and $400 million, in line with its previously provided guidance.

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