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Luke Kawa

The “most bullish thing” UBS heard Nvidia say

Nvidia’s robust rally following its earnings report and management’s conference call is proof enough that investors are picking up what Jensen Huang and co. are putting down.

But what exactly is engendering enhanced optimism about the state of an AI boom that is already well in bloom?

Well, here’s UBS Securities analyst Timothy Arcuri, who has a “buy” rating and $175 price target on the shares, on what stuck out the most to him:

“The most bullish thing we heard on this call was that, ‘on average, hyperscalers are each deploying nearly 1000 NVL72 racks, or 72,000 Blackwell GPUs per week’ and are ‘on track to further ramp output this quarter.’ When queried, management again affirmed that this is 1k racks PER week PER hyperscaler. This is much higher than almost all estimates regarding rack shipments and implies a run rate of at least 10k/month — a number that seems too high to use, but makes the point that racks are really taking off.”

In other words, the newest racks (which required some tweaks earlier in the year to solve overheating issues) are now flying off the shelves and into data centers at a rapid pace.

Arcuri’s observation related to these remarks from CFO Colette Kress on the conference call:

“The introduction of GB200 NVL was a fundamental architectural change to enable data-center-scale workloads and to achieve the lowest cost per inference token. While these systems are complex to build, we have seen a significant improvement in manufacturing yields, and rack shipments are moving to strong rates to end customers. GB200 NVL racks are now generally available for model builders, enterprises, and sovereign customers to develop and deploy AI.

On average, major hyperscalers are each deploying nearly 1,000 NVL72 racks or 72,000 Blackwell GPUs per week and are on track to further ramp output this quarter. Microsoft, for example, has already deployed tens of thousands of Blackwell GPUs and is expected to ramp to hundreds of thousands of GB200s with OpenAI as one of its key customers.”

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Tasha Matsumoto
12/5/25
Stocks eke out a gain as inflation remains mild

The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 all posted weekly gains.

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - DECEMBER 23: Benny the Bull, the Chicago Bulls mascot, dresses as Santa Claus in the game against the Milwaukee Bucks during the second half at the United Center on December 23, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois
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Luke Kawa

Microsoft is in talks to shift its custom chip business to Broadcom from Marvell, The Information reports

The Information’s profile of custom chip specialist Broadcom includes this tidbit:

“And now Microsoft is also in talks to design future chips with Broadcom, which would involve Microsoft switching its business from Marvell, another maker of custom chips, according to one person involved in the discussions.”

Shares of Marvell Technology briefly dipped into the red after this report hit the wires, but then pared that drop to trade modestly higher. The company codesigns the Maia line of ASICs for Microsoft that are custom-built for Azure. Microsoft is its second-biggest hyperscaler client, behind Amazon.

Marvell tumbled on a ho-hum earnings report earlier this week before going on to surge after CEO Matt Murphy offered a $10 billion revenue target for its upcoming fiscal year, which was above analysts’ expectations.

Perhaps this is a bit of Information fatigue, given how Microsoft was quick to deny a report from the outlet earlier this week about how the tech giant lowered its sales targets for AI products.

markets
Luke Kawa

Memory stocks soar as AI supporting cast repairs damage from steep November declines

There’s not much rhyme or reason to it, but memory stocks are ending the week with a stellar showing.

Shares of high-bandwidth memory specialist Micron, hard disk drive sellers Seagate Technology Holdings and Western Digital, and flash memory company Sandisk are all rising today.

Three of these stocks dropped about 20% in November as credit risk seeping into AI and a downturn in speculative momentum stocks weighed on the theme, with Sandisk faring the worst.

Micron, Western Digital, and Seagate have all since rebounded strongly and are about 5% or less from reclaiming all-time highs, while Sandisk has made up the least ground.

While GPUs (and, more recently, TPUs) get most of the headlines, data centers also need a boatload of memory chips that store information and feed it to those processors.

markets
Nia Warfield

Ulta soars as Q3 beat sparks flood of price target hikes

Ulta’s latest makeover is happening on Wall Street. Shares leapt Friday morning as analysts hiked their price targets after the beauty retailer topped Q3 estimates and raised its full-year outlook after the bell Thursday.

Earnings came in at $5.14 per share, handily beating analyst expectations of $4.64. Revenue also topped estimates at $2.86 billion, compared with the $2.72 billion expected. Ulta has benefited from resilient beauty spending, even as consumers pull back elsewhere and hunt more aggressively for discounts.

Ulta now expects full-year net sales of about $12.3 billion, up from a prior forecast of $12.0 billion to $12.1 billion. The retailer also lifted its earnings outlook to $25.20 to $25.50 per share, up from $23.85 to $24.30 previously. This marks Ulta’s second straight quarter of hiking its sales and profit forecast. Analysts are taking note:

  • Goldman Sachs maintained its “buy” rating and raised its price target to $642 from $584.

  • DA Davidson maintained its “buy” rating and raised its price target to $650 from $625.

  • JPMorgan maintained its “outperform” rating and raised its price target to $647 from $606.

  • Baird maintained its “outperform” rating and hiked its price target to $670 from $600.

  • Telsey Advisory maintained its “outperform” rating and raised its price target to $640 from $610.

  • Piper Sandler maintained its “outperform” rating and raised its price target to $615 from $590.

  • Canaccord Genuity maintained its “neutral” rating and raised its price target to $674 from $654.

markets
Max Knoblauch

Southwest cuts its earnings outlook on lost revenue due to government shutdown

Another big four airline has put a price tag on the 43-day government shutdown.

Southwest Airlines on Friday said lower revenue due to a temporary decline in demand during the shutdown, together with higher fuel costs, will ding its annual earnings before interest and taxes by between $100 million and $300 million. The carrier lowered its full-year EBIT outlook to $500 million, down from a prior range of $600 million to $800 million.

According to Southwest’s filing, bookings have returned to previous expectations following the end of the shutdown. Its shares dipped down about 1% in premarket trading.

The carrier joins Delta Air Lines in assigning a cost to the government closure. Earlier this week, Delta said the shutdown would cost it $200 million in the fourth quarter.

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