Nvidia (NVDA)
Chipmaker Nvidia rose 0.5% in premarket trading as investors awaited its long-awaited earnings report after the U.S. market closed on Wednesday.
The chipmaker, which has a market capitalisation of $3.2 trillion (£2.4 trillion), will set the tone for tech stocks as it spearheads spending on artificial intelligence (AI) and other companies' investments in new technologies.
Nvidia is expected to report second-quarter revenue of $28.7 billion, up 113% from the same period last year.
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Data center revenue is expected to grow 142% to $24 billion, while gaming revenue is expected to reach $2.7 billion.
Semiconductor stocks fell on Tuesday, with the AI darling falling 1%, suggesting that Nvidia's report could spill over into tech stocks, testing the AI trade that has powered its stock rally.
CrowdStrike (CRWD)
Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike Inc.'s shares were slightly above flat in premarket trading as investors closely watched the company's performance following the recent global outage ahead of its quarterly earnings report on Wednesday.
The cybersecurity company saw its market value plummet after it was involved in a Microsoft (MSFT) IT outage that caused widespread disruption. The incident, which was blamed on a “single content update on a Windows host,” caused severe disruption in a variety of sectors, including airlines, emergency services and the media around the world.
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“We are concerned that new customer growth may be impacted. Management may want to see more details on why CrowdStrike is the right answer and why the choice will not incur future setbacks,” the Bernstein analysts said in a note.
The cloud-based security company is expected to report quarterly earnings of $0.98 per share in its next reported report, which would represent 32.4% increase from the same period a year ago, according to Zacks Research. Revenue is expected to be $958.66 million, up 31% from the same period a year ago.
The company's shares have fallen about 20% since the outage, wiping about $20 billion from its market capitalization.
Nordstrom (JWN)
Shares of the department store chain rose 7% in premarket trading after second-quarter results beat expectations on sales and profits.
The Seattle-based company said it had net income of 72 cents per share. Adjusted for one-time gains and costs, earnings were 96 cents per share.
The results were well above Wall Street expectations, which called for earnings of 74 cents per share.
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The company's total revenue rose 3.2% to $3.89 billion in the quarter ended Aug. 3, from $3.77 billion in the same period last year.
Despite the better-than-expected profit, Nordstrom maintained a cautious outlook for the full year, expecting adjusted EPS of $1.75 to $2.05 and sales to decline 1% to increase 1%.
Prudential (PRU.L)
Insurer Prudential Inc. said it was confident of hitting future targets despite a fall in new business profits in the first half of the year, sending its shares up about 2 percent in morning trading.
Prudential said in earnings released Wednesday that new business profits for the first half of the year fell 1% on an annualized basis to $1.4 billion.
However, the company reported that adjusted operating profit for the first half rose 6% from the same period last year to $1.5 billion.
New business profits in Hong Kong fell 3% due to lower annual premium equivalent (APE) sales, a measure of new insurance business, while in China APE sales fell 18% and new business profits fell 33%.
But Prudential saw sales momentum pick up in June and predicted that it would continue into the second half of the year.
The company still expects its new business profits in 2024 to grow at an annual rate consistent with the levels needed to achieve its growth targets for 2022-2027.
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“The main reason for the decline in new business gains is due to very strong comparatives given that this time last year China was lifting anti-pandemic restrictions and reopening its economy,” Richard Hunter, head of markets at Interactive Investor, said in a statement.
Hunter added that geopolitical tensions and “particularly recent economic fears in China have had a negative impact on Prudential's stock price, even if it does not affect the company's long-term prospects.”
The stock has fallen 57% over the past three years, which he said is a “painful reminder that we're in a position where we need to recover.”
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