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Max Knoblauch2/26/26

Warner Bros. reports deeper-than-expected Q4 loss amid its bidding war

Warner Bros. Discovery reported its fourth-quarter earnings before the market opened on Thursday. The results come as the company finds itself in the middle of a still-hot bidding war between Netflix and Paramount. Its shares were flat in premarket trading.

In the three months ended in December, WBD reported:

A loss of $0.10 per share, deeper than the $0.03 loss expected by analysts polled by FactSet.
Total revenue of $9.46 billion, ahead of the $9.35 billion consensus.

Warner Bros.’ cable business booked $4.2 billion in revenue, beating estimates of $4.04 billion but down 12% from last year. The division is a key difference between the Netflix and Paramount acquisition offers: Netflix is seeking to acquire everything except Warner’s cable networks, while Paramount is seeking to purchase WBD in its entirety.

Industry analysts mostly view WBD’s cable networks as being worth between $2 and $4 per share, and Paramount’s most recent bid is $3.25 per share more than Netflix’s. Paramount has said its own analysis values Warner’s cable division at $0 per share.

WBD said it would not answer any questions about the two proposals on Thursday’s earnings call, but noted the following about Paramount’s recent offer:

“There can be no assurance that the Board will conclude that the transaction proposed by PSKY is superior to the merger with Netflix or that any definitive agreement or transaction will result from Warner Bros. Discovery’s discussions with PSKY.”

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Stocks gain after Trump orders Hormuz blockade, says Iran wants to make a deal

Stocks shrugged off the weekend’s failed peace talks.

Josh Giddey #3 of the Chicago Bulls grabs a rebound during the second half against the Detroit Pistons on October 22, 2025 at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois.

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Matt Phillips10h

Intel is having its best year since 1987

Intel is up for its ninth straight session on Monday, continuing the romp that has made it the top performer in the S&P 500 this month, ganing roughly 46% in April so far.

The series of deals Intel has recently struck with Alphabet on a custom chip collaboration and with Elon Musk on his Terafab project seem to be helping reshape traders’ views on what was seen only a few months ago as an ailing American tech icon.

That turnaround in perception has been nothing short of historic.

Intel is now up almost 230% over the last year. You have to go back to 1987 to find a better 12-month run for the stock.

Still, the forward-looking market is giving Intel credit for a turnaround that really hasn’t happened yet on an operational level. Wall Street analysts expect another year-on-year sales decline when Intel reports results on April 23, while anticipating that Intel can cobble together adjusted earnings per share of a penny.

All the same, the market clearly sees a future that, at least for now, it likes.

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Neoclouds surge as Anthropic’s deals mean the scramble for compute is on

Just because software stocks are crushing semiconductors on Monday in a reversal of recent trends doesn’t mean the AI trade is taking a nosedive.

CoreWeave is on fire yet again, with strong follow-through after having reached deals to provide AI compute to Anthropic and Meta last week. Other data center companies like Nebius, IREN, Cipher Digital, and Applied Digital are also up big.

A scramble for compute is particularly great news for these providers of “surge capacity.”

Anthropic is producing AI tools and capabilities that people love. What people have been less than enamored with about Anthropic (especially as of late!) is access to compute, with myriad complaints of stealth token rationing.

OpenAI has reportedly argued that its immense cash burn to accumulate compute is therefore its competitive advantage over the Claude developer. Anthropic is now under pressure to spend a lot more on compute so that its customers are happy with the ability and availability of its offerings.

Similarly, a lot of networking/connectivity stocks that spiked on Friday, like Astera Labs and POET Technologies, are building on that momentum, with flash memory standout Sandisk up strongly as well.

Separately, PJM warned after the close on Friday that the US grid operator is looking to add 15 gigawatts of new power supply due to expected increases in demand tied to AI through Q1 2027. It’s seemingly clearer that there’s strong visibility into increased appetite for compute, power, and the other materials needed to facilitate the boom.

As such, AI energy plays like Vistra, Bloom Energy, Oklo, and Plug Power are also enjoying a solid start to the week.

US-POLITICS-ECONOMY-CONGRESS-BANKING

What to watch as the biggest US banks report earnings

Private credit exposure will be in focus, but banks haven’t been trading in lockstep with BDCs.

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Unloved software stocks have their day in the sun

Call it a dead-cat bounce — or for the more optimistically inclined, beaten-down growth stocks finally offering some value:

The iShares Expanded Tech Software ETF is catching a bid on Monday morning, up nearly 3% as of 10 a.m. ET, while the VanEck Semiconductor ETF is trading roughly flat.

As a compromise, you could say that software’s trading like nobody owns it and investors have decided to maybe not short it so much.

The likes of Workday, ServiceNow, AppLovin, CrowdStrike, Atlassian, Palantir, and Circle are posting massive gains to kick off the week.

In the five sessions ended Friday, the semis ETF outperformed its software counterpart by a whopping 18.4 percentage points, the most on record.

For what it’s worth, the chart also shows that semis vs. software has had some very significant, tradable reversals despite how poorly the latter has performed this year. In fact, software’s best-ever five-session stretch relative to semis came in early March, when traders were digesting the US-Israeli attacks against Iran.

These two major parts of the tech sector have never traded more out of step with one another than they have been lately.

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