US airlines are taking off as ticket prices rise and Spirit plummets

Plane ticket prices jumped 4% in July following a 0.1% decline in June, per this morning’s CPI report, giving airline investors some reason to cheer. Customers might not be so thrilled.

Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, and American Airlines are all up at least 8% on Tuesday, while Southwest Airlines is up closer to 4%. Smaller rivals like JetBlue and Alaska Air are also firmly in the green.

On the other end of the runway sits Spirit Airlines, which is down more than 40% on the day after issuing a going concern warning in its earnings report on Monday. Its descent is also potentially being treated as good news for the rest of the space.

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Max Knoblauch1h

Warner Bros. shares jump as Paramount Skydance reportedly preps a $71 billion bid with Arab sovereign wealth funds

Shares of HBO and CNN parent Warner Bros. Discovery are climbing on Tuesday on a report that rival Paramount Skydance is prepping a $71 billion bid for the entertainment giant.

According to Variety, Paramount would front $50 billion for the deal, with $7 billion each coming from three Arab nations’ wealth funds (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE).

Variety reports that each fund would receive a minority stake in Warner Bros. as well as “an IP, a movie premiere, a movie shoot.” Warner Bros. Discovery shares jumped 6% following Variety’s report, before paring its gains after Paramount called the news “categorically inaccurate.”

WBD is said to have already rejected three previous offers from Paramount. The company previously set a deadline of November 20 (this Thursday) to hear bids from interested parties — a group that reportedly also includes Comcast and Netflix.

The Saudi Arabian wealth fund, PIF, made headlines in September when it struck a $55 billion take-private deal for the gaming giant Electronic Arts — the largest leveraged buyout in corporate history.

David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance Said to Prep $71 Billion Warner Bros. Discovery Bid With Three Arab Sovereign Wealth Funds

Luke Kawa

Nvidia has a lot of questions to answer, and none of them are about demand for its AI chips

Everyone wants Nvidia chips. Now the chip designer just has to reassure investors it’ll still make piles of money meeting that demand even as supply chain and competitive pressures intensify.

Matt Phillips4h

Analyst: Sandisk a candidate for S&P 500 after surge

Despite having a rough day today as investors flee risky stocks, Sandisk has had a ridiculous run since it was spun off from its former parent, Western Digital, in February at a valuation of roughly $5 billion.

It’s now worth more than $30 billion, thanks to a more than 400% surge over the past three months alone.

The company makes a kind of chip known as NAND flash memory, which retains data when electrical power is turned off. That attribute made them a mainstay in battery-powered consumer products like phones and cameras.

But surging demand for data storage products related to the AI investment boom — which has supercharged shares of hard disk makers like Western Digital and Seagate Technology Holdings — has also pushed up prices for NAND flash chips, setting off the explosion in Sandisk shares.

In fact, TheStreet.com reports that analyst Melissa Roberts of brokerage firm Stephens is arguing in a note Tuesday that the price surge “makes Sandisk a natural candidate for promotion to the S&P 500 in the next round of index changes.” Inclusion in the index usually bumps a stock because index funds have to buy it.

J. Edward Moreno

LifeMD reports earnings miss, weak guidance amid “fierce competition” in GLP-1 market

The company has partnerships with Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, the drugmakers behind the blockbuster GLP-1 drugs.

Blue Ozempic pens with yellow measuring tape on pink background.

Luke Kawa5h

Microsoft, Nvidia investing in Anthropic; Anthropic to buy $30 billion in Azure computing capacity

Well, this is the Platonic ideal of a circular AI deal.

In a joint press release, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Anthropic (maker of the Claude genAI) announced a strategic partnership that includes a slew of 10- and 11-digit investment plans:

Anthropic will purchase $30 billion of computing capacity from Microsoft’s Azure.
Anthropic’s commitment includes up to 1 gigawatt in computing capacity that will be served through Nvidia’s Grace Blackwell and (yet to be released) Vera Rubin systems.
Microsoft is investing up to $5 billion in Anthropic.
Nvidia is investing up to $10 billion in Anthropic.

That’s revenues for Microsoft and Nvidia, and two high-profile investors for Anthropic.

Bank of America analysts have argued that these circular-seeming deals are a way for leaders in the space to beef up their potential addressable market that “could multiply future benefits.”

Anthropic announced its foray into data centers last week with plans for $50 billion in custom-built locations in partnership with Fluidstack. The company is targeting $70 billion in revenues by 2028, which would help it support this capex binge.

Despite the massive numbers being tossed around here, Anthropic said that Amazon’s AWS would remain its primary cloud provider, per Bloomberg.

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