The “most important variable” for a rally that sticks

There’s been a deep selloff in formerly high-flying, speculative tech stocks as of late. Third-quarter results from POET Technologies are digging the company a bigger hole, with shares down double digits as of 7:20 a.m. ET.

The optical communications company reported a loss of $0.11 per share for Q3, worse than the $0.09 loss per share that analysts anticipated, per FactSet.

Revenues for the quarter were limited, at under $300,000, but should begin to pick up more meaningfully in the second half of next year, when the company expects it’ll begin to ship optical engines that were recently ordered.

“The placement of two successive initial production orders from two key customers valued at over $5.6 million is the beginning of a revenue ramp which we expect to increase steadily throughout 2026,” said Dr. Suresh Venkatesan, Chairman & CEO of POET Technologies.

Dr. Venkatesan previously told us that the company’s focus this year “has been to cross that last hurdle of ensuring that the technology that we’re developing is truly manufacturable at scale and at wafer scale.”

For POET, and for the broader speculative tech space at large, it’s seemingly going to take something else to arrest and reverse their recent swoons.

StubHub has plummeted in premarket trading after reporting earnings results that missed Wall Street estimates last night, with shares down 20% at 4:50 a.m. ET.

The company reported a loss per share of $4.27, compared to the $2.87 loss analysts polled by FactSet were expecting. StubHub said the steeper-than-expected losses were in part related to costs from its recent initial public offering. Still, the company reported $468 million in sales, more than the $452 million analysts were penciling in.

StubHub’s larger competitor, Live Nation, also reported earnings earlier this month that missed the Street’s estimates.

Solid Q4 results and a slightly better-than-anticipated outlook from Applied Materials still aren’t inspiring investors in premarket trading, with the stock down 4.8% as of 4:40 a.m. ET.

For the three months ended October 26, the firm reported:

• Revenue: $6.8 billion (compared to analyst estimates of $6.67 billion and guidance for $6.2 billion to $7.2 billion)

• Adjusted earnings per share: $2.17 (estimate: $2.11, guidance: $1.91 to $2.21)

Q1 guidance was also modestly ahead of estimates, as management pointed to sales of about $6.85 billion (plus or minus $500 million) with adjusted earnings per share of $2.18 (plus or minus $0.05). The consensus estimates for these figures were $6.81 billion and $2.15, respectively.

The company is preparing to meet a bigger pickup in demand by the middle of next year.

“Based on our conversations with our customers and partners, we are preparing Applied’s operations and service organizations to be ready to support higher demand beginning in the second half of calendar 2026,” Chief Financial Officer Brice Hill said.

Applied Materials was up more than 35% year to date heading into this report. That being said, it’s thoroughly lagged peers KLA Corp and Lam Research in the semi wafer fab equipment space, with the bulk of that underperformance coming after its Q3 earnings report in mid-August included underwhelming guidance for these Q4 results.

The entire space has come under scrutiny for its business with China, but Applied Materials has had the worst go of it: in early October, management flagged a $600 million hit to fiscal 2026 sales because of export restrictions.

“In 2026, we expect wafer fab equipment spending in China to be lower, and we are not anticipating significant changes to market restrictions,” said CEO Gary Dickerson on the conference call following earnings, noting the share of China’s wafer fab equipment market the firm couldn’t sell to rose to “well over 20%” in late 2024 and early 2025 due to export restrictions, up from 10% in early 2024.

Needham analyst Charles Shi flagged how export restrictions shifted Applied Materials’ ability to meet demand from other customers, which helped Q4 sales while hurting its Q1 outlook:

We believe the stock was down in after hours as the buy side bogey for F1Q26 was as high as $7.1B, partially due to buy side viewing the $110MM China revenue in F4Q25 and some of the $600MM China revenue in FY26, which were thought to be lost due to recent BIS 50% affiliate rule, should be added back as the US later suspended the rule for one year. Management clarified that some ex-China revenue were pulled into October when the BIS rule was first announced in late September, and it is the reason why AMAT actually beat the original F4Q25 guidance (which it gets no credit for), and AMAT did not guide a higher number for F1Q26 (which ends up hurting the stock).

French gaming company Ubisoft, the maker of franchises like “Assassin’s Creed” and “Tom Clancy’s The Division,” took the odd step on Thursday of announcing the delay of its latest earnings report at the 11th hour.

The company also requested that trading of its shares be halted. Ubisoft’s US-listed ADRs are down more than 8% following the news.

“Ubisoft has requested Euronext to halt trading of its shares and its bonds from the market opening on November 14, 2025, until the publication of its first-half 2025-26 results in the coming days,” read an emergency press release. As a few were quick to point out online, Ubisoft advertised Black Friday deals “up to 90% off” shortly after the delay was announced.

According to reporting by Kotaku, Ubisoft CFO Frederick Duguet sent an email to staff stating that they could not share any explanation for the move with employees “due to legal regulations.”

Earlier this year, Ubisoft said it would spin off a collection of its top titles into a new subsidiary, with Chinese gaming giant Tencent taking a 25% minority stake in the carve-out with a $1.25 billion investment.

In September, Ubisoft rival EA announced it would be taken private in a $55 billion deal by a group including Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.