Markets
markets
Luke Kawa

Wedbush boosts Palo Alto Networks price target on “beatable” earnings and increased momentum in the field

Wedbush tech analyst Dan Ives is bumping up his price target on Palo Alto Networks ahead of the release of the cybersecurity company’s quarterly report later this week.

He now sees the stock running to $225 (prior: $200), believing the company “is seeing increased momentum in the field around its cyber security platformization strategy.”

Palo Alto Networks is scheduled to release its quarterly results on Thursday after the close, with analysts anticipating adjusted earnings of $0.82 per share on sales of about $2.24 billion.

“While not expecting major fireworks with [the upcoming] FY2Q25 earnings, the seeds of growth are now in place for a very important 2H25 with the cyber threat landscape seeing elevated activity and sophistication,” he wrote, adding that the company’s guidance as well as consensus estimates “remain beatable.”

Ives’ optimistic stance on the company is shared by most of his peers. A few weeks ago, Morgan Stanley boosted its price target for the stock as well. 70% of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg (including Ives!) have a buy rating on the company, with an average price target of $207.25. The stock closed at $196.40 on Monday.

“We believe cyber security is a 3rd derivative of the AI Revolution and PANW is well positioned to see incremental deal flow as more strategic enterprise AI projects take hold over the coming year,” the analyst wrote.

Palo Alto was among the group of stocks that got a bump even amid the DeepSeek-induced sell-off on January 27 after the Chinese AI developer claimed it was besieged by cyberattacks.

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Tasha Matsumoto
7h
Stocks dip ahead of tomorrow’s scheduled talks between the US and Iran

While the S&P 500 fell on the day, the benchmark index posted a winning week amid ceasefire optimism.

Brown bear on a rock
markets
Matt Phillips

Intel shares are officially a thing

April most definitely has not been the cruelest month for US chip giant Intel or its shareholders.

The stock is on a remarkable run that’s made it the best performer in the S&P 500 for the month, posting a gain of nearly 43% shortly after 11 a.m. ET Friday. That’s outdone AI darlings like Sandisk, Lumentum, Ciena Corp., Coherent, and Seagate Technology Holdings.

In fact, the monthly view actually underplays the extent of the stock’s performance. Over the eight sessions that ended yesterday — which includes March 31 — the stock was up just shy of 50%. That’s by far its best eight-day streak over the last 30 years.

Investors have eaten up Intel’s announcements this week of partnerships, first with Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Terafab project, and separately, with Alphabet on developing custom chips for Google Cloud’s AI infrastructure needs.

More broadly, the seemingly relentless demand for computing capacity and chips related to AI seems to present, at least, the prospect of Intel actually solving the long-standing problems at its contract chipmaking business — known as a foundry — that have weighed on the business for years.

Oh, being partially nationalized by the US government amid an increasing global focus on ensuring secure supply chains for crucial technologies like semiconductors probably doesn’t hurt either.

(In case you're keeping track, the US bought a nearly 10% stake in Intel for about $8.9 billion in late August of last year. Today, that stake is worth about $27 billion.)

Luke Kawa
11h
Anthropic’s making AI boom again — and picking the winners

More compute = more revenues, and going custom has its own particular consequences for different AI stocks.

4th of July Fireworks in Long Beach
markets
Matt Phillips

Palantir’s slide continues, but President Trump tries to help

Investors were selling Palantir shares again on Friday, with the stock falling as much as 6% before stabilizing, thanks to an assist from the White House.

At its worst moments, the sell-off put the retail favorite on track for its worst weekly loss (more than 16%) since February 2021.

But Palantir has powerful friends: President Trump posted on Truth Social celebrating the company’s “great war fighting capabilities,” sending the stock higher, though it remained in the red.

Truth post on PLTR
(Truth Social)

The overall negative sentiment seems to stem from Anthropic’s powerful new AI models, at least judging from the latest epistle from Palantir bull Dan Ives at Wedbush Securities:

“Anthropic released a new product around multi-agent orchestration, which continues to add more headwinds to the software sector. While Anthropic is hitting a new scale with the company now at $30 billion [annual run rate], up from $9 billion at the start of the year, we believe this is not at the expense of PLTR’s business as the company continues to accelerate both its US commercial and government businesses.”

Of course, the specter of AI undermining of other software companies has been a well-established theme for months. And it’s clearly at play in the market on Friday, with Palo Alto Networks, ServiceNow, CrowdStrike, Zscaler, Figma, and Atlassian continuing to get clocked on negative AI implications.

But the recent inclusion of Palantir among the pack of potentially replaceable software providers is newer, with the view popularized by well-followed market commentator Michael Burry’s pronouncement — since deleted — that Anthropic is “eating Palantir’s lunch,” which seemed to contribute to the downdraft for Palantir today.

The stock dove through its 50-day moving average in recent days, underscoring the sputtering momentum for what has been one of the market’s biggest winners over the last couple years. Long-term holders are still up massively, with the stock up about 1,400% over the last three years.

124% 🚗
Max Knoblauch

China exported more than twice as many electric vehicles (and plug-in hybrids) in the first quarter of 2026 as it did in the same period last year, according to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).

New energy vehicle exports surged 124% year over year, as major players like BYD and Chery ramped up overseas efforts to combat lower domestic sales. Tesla’s China business also boosted exports, shipping 164% more EVs than the same period the year before.

Nio is ramping up export efforts as well, with a goal to deliver “several thousand” EVs overseas this year and have a presence in 40 countries. Still, the automaker exported 271 vehicles in Q1 — less than half of a percent of the company’s total deliveries.

According to the CPCA, April will see the country’s automotive industry continue its “slow recovery.”

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