Markets
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Hyunsoo Rim

Yum! Brands misses Q2 estimates as US demand weakens

Yum! Brands posted a miss across the board, reporting lower-than-expected Q2 results amid a slowdown in consumer spending at its key US franchises.

Revenue rose 9.6% year over year to $1.93 billion, slightly below analyst estimates of $1.94 billion. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $1.44, also missing the $1.46 expected, while same-store sales grew 2% globally, falling short of the 2.3% consensus compiled by FactSet.

The fast-food giant behind KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell posted mixed results across its brands.

Taco Bell is doing okay. The brand, which is responsible for ~38% of the company’s revenue, saw US same-store sales rise 4%, down from 5% growth a year ago. But over at KFC and Pizza Hut, things aren’t so rosy: both saw their US same-store sales slip 5%.

For KFC specifically, competition in the fried chicken arena has never been so intense, with chains like Chick-fil-A, as well as a flood of newcomers like Raising Cane’s, Dave’s Hot Chicken, and Church’s Chicken, clucking at its heels.

As a broader pullback in consumer spending and rising ingredient costs weigh on margins, Yum! and its rivals have leaned into budget meals to lure cost-conscious diners, including Taco Bell’s $5 to $9 meal boxes.

Taco Bell parent Yum Brands misses estimates as spending slows, costs rise

Taco Bell parent Yum Brands misses estimates as spending slows, costs rise

The fast-food giant behind KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell posted mixed results across its brands.

Taco Bell is doing okay. The brand, which is responsible for ~38% of the company’s revenue, saw US same-store sales rise 4%, down from 5% growth a year ago. But over at KFC and Pizza Hut, things aren’t so rosy: both saw their US same-store sales slip 5%.

For KFC specifically, competition in the fried chicken arena has never been so intense, with chains like Chick-fil-A, as well as a flood of newcomers like Raising Cane’s, Dave’s Hot Chicken, and Church’s Chicken, clucking at its heels.

As a broader pullback in consumer spending and rising ingredient costs weigh on margins, Yum! and its rivals have leaned into budget meals to lure cost-conscious diners, including Taco Bell’s $5 to $9 meal boxes.

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Luke Kawa

A tiny UK company is showing how easy it is to get an (undeserved?) Nvidia halo effect

UK-based RedCloud Holdings, which operates a business-to-business platform for retailers, nearly doubled at its peak in premarket trading after announcing that “it has joined the NVIDIA Connect program as part of its mission to deliver a new operating system for global trade.”

RedCloud is fairly small, with a market cap of under $70 million heading into Wednesday’s session. Shares are up about 25% as of 9:33 a.m. ET.

What is the Nvidia Connect program, you might ask? Sounds fancy. And official.

The $4 trillion chip designer’s website describes it as “a free program that helps software development companies and service providers shorten time to market through tailored development resources, technical training and guidance, and preferred pricing on NVIDIA technologies.”

In other words, companies learn how to be more effective users (read: customers!) of Nvidia’s products and technology.

A cynic might point out that the requirements of joining the Nvidia Connect program are arguably only slightly more onerous than securing a Discover credit card: the applying organization “must provide at least two contacts with corporate emails, maintain a working website, be officially incorporated, and accept the program’s terms and conditions” to be eligible, per Nvidia. There are no application or membership fees.

Still, Jorge Guerrero, assistant vice president of product at RedCloud, made it sound like a pretty big deal in the company’s press release:

“Joining NVIDIA Connect is an exciting opportunity for our development teams. This program provides us with access to NVIDIA’s ecosystem of AI tools and expertise, which we expect to be instrumental in building powerful AI-native infrastructure to enable intelligent trade of FMCG products across global supply chains. Specifically, we are seeking to expand and refine our AI models, improve real-time inference capabilities, and accelerate the deployment of next-generation applications.”

markets
Luke Kawa

One of Opendoor’s top shareholders, Access Industries, sold nearly $100 million in stock on Tuesday

Access Industries is rushing for the exits in Opendoor Technologies.

The investment firm run by Len Blavatnik, one of Opendoor’s earliest and biggest shareholders, sold 13.66 million shares of the online real estate company on Tuesday, per a filing, generating roughly $97 million.

With this divestment, it’s dumped nearly $300 million worth of Opendoor stock, or almost 36 million shares, this month through its AI LiquidRE arm. Access Industries had prior sales on Monday and September 12.

Shares of Opendoor are down more than 30% over the past week, but are up big in premarket trading on Wednesday.

Pueo Keffer, one of the Opendoor directors who recently stepped down amid the company’s leadership changes, is a senior managing director at Access Industries. However, he tweeted that he’s still adding to his personal holdings of the stock.

markets
Hyunsoo Rim

Alibaba surges on AI spending hike, new model launch, and Nvidia partnership

Alibaba jumped over 9% in early trading on Wednesday after the company announced greater investment in AI, a partnership with Nvidia, and a new model.

At Alibaba’s annual flagship technology conference, CEO Eddie Wu said the company plans to expand its AI investment over the next three years beyond the $53 billion announced in February, though a specific uplift wasn’t revealed.

The firm also unveiled the latest version of its “largest and most capable” AI model series, the Qwen3-Max — as other Chinese tech giants like Baidu, Tencent, and ByteDance are doubling down on home-grown solutions to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic amid a wider Chinese push to reduce dependence on Western AI hardware and models.

According to Reuters, Alibaba said that its new model “outperformed rival products including Anthropic’s Claude and DeepSeek-V3.1 in certain metrics,” citing third-party benchmarks like Tau2-Bench.

Adding to the hype was Alibaba’s new partnership with Nvidia: the company said it will integrate the chip giant’s AI development tools into Alibaba Cloud to support “physical AI,” which includes real-word products like robots and driverless cars — just a day after Nvidia announced a $100 billion deal with OpenAI.

Alibaba also announced plans to open its first data centers in Brazil, France, and the Netherlands, while adding new sites in Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Dubai in 2026. Last month, the company struck a deal with Unicom — China’s second-largest mobile service provider — to deploy its in-house AI accelerators.

With this morning’s rise, Alibaba’s shares are at their highest level since 2021, up over 110% year to date.

markets
Luke Kawa & Nia Warfield

Stocks pull back as megacap tech slumps

Stocks fell on Tuesday as the market’s tech titans took a breather after a hot run. The S&P 500 fell 0.6%, the Nasdaq 100 lagged with a 0.7% decline, and the Russell 2000 outperformed, albeit with a 0.2% drop.

The Magnificent 7 had their worst day in over a month, down 1.5%, with every constituent falling.

Consumer discretionary and tech were the two worst-performing S&P sector ETFs, while energy fared the best.

Bright spots on the day were Halliburton and Paramount Skydance, which rose 7.5% and about 6%, respectively. Generac and Vistra were among the biggest decliners, falling more than 10% and 6%, respectively. Elsewhere…

Nvidia fell 2.8% even as Wedbush Securities analysts called its recent $100 billion deal with OpenAI a “watershed moment” for the AI revolution. Separately, Bank of America analysts said the chip designer is poised to generate hundreds of billions in free cash flow.

Shares of Opendoor sank more than 15% after its third-biggest shareholder, Access Industries, sold 11.36 million shares of the online real estate company through its AI LiquidRE arm.

Firefly Aerospace also dove more than 15% after the Texas-based space launch startup missed Wall Street’s estimates for the company’s first quarterly report since its August IPO.

Plug Power had a wild ride, up double digits in premarket trading before ending down 4.6%, snapping a nine-day winning streak that was close to becoming the longest on record for the hydrogen fuel cell company.

Boeing ticked up another 2% after announcing on Monday that Uzbekistan Airways will order up to 22 of its 787 Dreamliner jets.

Satellite stocks like AST SpaceMobile, Planet Labs, and Rocket Lab climbed on elevated activity, especially in the options market.

IonQ jumped more than 4% after the company announced “a significant technological advancement in its pursuit of scalable quantum networks.”

Shares of Sinclair Inc. rose more than 3% after the self-proclaimed “largest ABC affiliate group” said it will continue to keep “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off its ABC stations.

Palantir rose 1.8% after Bank of America analysts hiked their price target on the stock to $215 — the highest among the published price targets tracked by FactSet.

Kenvue, the company behind Tylenol, gained 1.6% as doctors pushed back against President Trump’s claims about a link between the drug and autism, per Reuters.

markets
Luke Kawa

Micron crushes on sales and earnings, provides stellar guidance for current quarter

Micron is moving higher in postmarket trading after reporting blowout fiscal Q4 2025 results.

For the three months ended August 28, the memory chip specialist reported:

  • Revenues: $11.32 billion (estimate $11.15 billion)

  • Adjusted diluted earnings per share: $3.03 (estimate $2.84)

  • Adjusted gross margin: 45.7% (estimate 44.3%)

Guidance for its fiscal Q1 2026 is similarly stellar, as management expects:

  • Revenues: $12.5 billion, plus or minus $300 million (estimate $11.9 billion)

  • Adjusted diluted EPS: $3.75, plus or minus $0.15 (estimate $3.05)

  • Adjusted gross margin: 51.5%, plus or minus 1 percentage point (estimate 45.7%)

The midpoint of Micron’s adjusted diluted EPS and margin outlooks are above the highest estimates among analysts polled by Bloomberg.

“As the only US-based memory manufacturer, Micron is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the AI opportunity ahead,” CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said.

Micron is the best-performing member of the VanEck Semiconductor ETF year to date, as the stock has nearly doubled in 2025 heading into this report. Shares have been on a tear in September, rising for a record 12 consecutive sessions before that winning streak ended on Friday.

Micron has fallen the session after releasing its last three quarterly reports.

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