United States

Redemption requests fell from the prior quarter in the flagship private credit funds of U.S. asset manager Blue Owl Capital. According to an investor letter the firm published on the 2nd, redemption requests for the July-September quarter across two of its funds totaled 4.2 billion dollars, down from 4.7 billion dollars in the previous quarter. At its flagship Blue Owl Credit Income fund, known as OCIC, redemption requests in the July-September quarter amounted to 16.8 percent of outstanding shares, down from 18.8 percent in the prior quarter. OCIC manages 35.1 billion dollars in assets, making it the second-largest non-traded business development company in the industry. At Blue Owl Technology Income, known as OTIC, which focuses on the technology sector, redemption requests in the July-September quarter came to 1.1 billion dollars, equivalent to 39 percent of outstanding shares, roughly flat from 1.1 billion dollars and 38.1 percent in the previous quarter. The decline in redemption requests is a fresh sign that the private credit industry may be emerging from the worst of the redemption pressure.

BWX Technologies held an investor day on September 29 where management laid out bullish long-term targets, after the stock fell 27% over the past three months. The company, which holds a virtual monopoly on naval nuclear reactors and fuel components for the U.S. Navy, said its total backlog has doubled to $8.4 billion, roughly nine quarters of contracted run rate, and projected 2026 revenue of $3.8 billion, about 98% of it from core nuclear activities. BWXT is selling a majority stake in its non-core medical isotope unit for up to $800 million while retaining a 20% interest, and is reallocating proceeds into nuclear manufacturing assets, including a 500,000-square-foot footprint expansion through the Precision Components Group acquisition. Its updated 2030 roadmap targets annual revenue of $5.5 billion to $6 billion on low double-digit compound organic growth, with adjusted EBITDA margins expanding from 17.5% to approximately 20% and cumulative free cash flow exceeding $2 billion through the end of the decade. The stock, which peaked above $241 and has traded down into the $130-$140 range, still carries a roughly 36x trailing and 27x forward price-to-earnings multiple, while hedge fund holders rose to 65 in the second quarter from 61 in the prior quarter and short interest sits at 4.42% of the public float.

Airship AI Holdings has announced $29 million of firm-fixed-price awards from an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, a sum larger than its approximately $18.2 million of trailing revenue. The awards carry a six-month performance period and cover software integration, edge and server-side AI products, and hardware. BigBear.ai, by contrast, ended June with $409.8 million in cash and investments and approximately $16.6 million of debt, alongside a $269.6 million backlog. BigBear's June-quarter revenue grew 13% to $36.7 million with gross margin of 32.8%, but its adjusted EBITDA loss widened to $11.6 million from $8.5 million. At October 2 prices, BigBear traded at about 9.7 times trailing revenue versus roughly 4.0 times for Airship, while Airship reported $12.4 million in cash and used only about $235,000 in operating cash during the June quarter.

Jim Cramer said GRAIL, Inc. could climb much higher after an FDA advisory panel backed its Galleri multi-cancer early detection test, comparing the stock to Moderna when it traded around $120. The panel voted 7-2 with one abstention that Galleri's benefits outweighed its risks, 6-4 on effectiveness and unanimously on safety, though the recommendation is not binding and final approval had not been granted as of October 2, with Reuters reporting a decision is expected in the coming months. GRAIL generated $44.7 million of revenue in the second quarter, up 26% year over year, as Galleri revenue rose 24% to $42.6 million and test volume increased 35% to more than 61,000, while the company posted a $110.2 million net loss and a $90.3 million adjusted EBITDA loss with $861.6 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term marketable securities at June 30. Moderna, Inc. reported $145 million of revenue in the second quarter against $142 million a year earlier and a $782 million net loss, ending June with $6.9 billion in cash, cash equivalents and investments, and its Phase 3 INTerpath-001 trial of intismeran autogene with Merck's Keytruda met its recurrence-free-survival and distant-metastasis-free-survival endpoints in resected melanoma. Citi analyst Geoff Meacham said on September 30 that Moderna's roughly $80 billion market capitalization was approaching Regeneron's despite materially lower expected revenue and earnings, while GRAIL's bear case rests on adoption and reimbursement, with Galleri costing about $700 out of pocket and generally not covered by Medicare or private insurers.

Viasat Inc., through its subsidiary Inmarsat Government, Inc., was awarded the U.S. Space Force's MECS2 contract in September 2026, securing an initial US$42 million task order under a seven-year Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity agreement with a ceiling of up to US$307 million to provide fully managed global SATCOM services for the U.S. Marine Corps. The award deepens Viasat's role in secure, multi-orbit government communications and highlights the importance of its ViaSat-3-enabled Ka-band network and 24x7 managed services capabilities. The company's narrative projects $5.5 billion revenue and $626.3 million earnings by 2029, with forecasts yielding a $103.94 fair value, a 44% upside to its current price. Some of the lowest ranked analysts were far more cautious, assuming only about 3.9 percent annual revenue growth and continued losses. The MECS2 award looks incrementally positive for the investment thesis, reinforcing defense demand and multi-orbit capabilities, but it does not by itself resolve near term pressure from high ViaSat-3 and Inmarsat capex or the risk that broadband subscriber declines keep weighing on revenue quality.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. reported $58.0 billion in second-quarter 2026 revenue, up 27% from a year earlier, with net income jumping 41% to $21.2 billion and earnings per share of $7.70. Average loans grew 10% and deposits increased 7%, while return on tangible common equity reached 29%. The bank raised its quarterly dividend from $1.50 to $1.65 per share, an annualized $6.60 starting in the third quarter of 2026, and approved a new $50 billion share-repurchase program. The stock trades at about 13.5x forward earnings, roughly 10% below its average forward P/E of about 15x over the previous five quarter ends, with a forward dividend yield of around 1.99% and a payout ratio of about 26%.

Jim Cramer said on the September 28 episode of Mad Money that Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is developing into a broader technology and infrastructure company, with Starlink, AI computing, and Starship as multiple potential growth engines. Cramer pointed to SpaceX's GPU infrastructure business, saying Elon Musk is renting GPUs bought from NVIDIA to Google at an $11 billion a year run rate and has a similar deal with Anthropic at a $15 billion run rate starting in October, roughly $2.17 billion a month in compute rentals. The company's second-quarter results showed AI revenue of $2.56 billion, up 247% year over year, alongside $14.1 billion in contracted Cloud Services Agreements, though that AI revenue came with a $1.26 billion operating loss. Cramer also highlighted the September 28 Starship flight, which reached orbit and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, but a Raptor Vacuum upper-stage engine shut down prematurely, cutting the planned 10-hour mission to about three hours. SpaceX generated $7.81 billion of second-quarter revenue while spending $18.37 billion on capital expenditures, $15.83 billion of it on AI, and Cramer separately warned that a large amount of restricted stock will become eligible to enter the market over the next year. Insider Monkey reported that 119 hedge fund portfolios held SpaceX at the end of the second quarter of 2026, and the stock trades at a price-to-sales multiple of 85.5x.

Movements to form corporate alliances across different industries are gathering pace, centered on physical AI, in which robots and automobiles move autonomously through artificial intelligence. Five companies including the herbal medicine maker Tsumura and the machinery trading firm Yamazen have recently opened a data collection center for physical AI in Narashino City, Chiba Prefecture, where up to 40 robots will repeatedly perform tasks to train robots capable of acting autonomously. Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Fanuc, and Yaskawa Electric, Japan's three major robot makers, are partnering with Fujitsu and the American company Nvidia, while about 20 companies including Kyocera, Kobe Steel, and the software developer Alm are pooling data and expertise with the aim of automating the processing techniques of skilled engineers. Noetra, in which 44 companies including SoftBank and NEC participate, is independently developing an AI foundation model that will serve as the brain of physical AI, aiming for practical application in fiscal 2030, and the government has decided to provide more than 380 billion yen in support for the project this fiscal year.

Grab Holdings Limited reported record second-quarter results, with revenue rising 22% year-over-year to $997 million and On-Demand gross merchandise volume up 21% to $6.5 billion. Monthly transacting users increased 17% to 53.9 million, adjusted EBITDA climbed 54% to $168 million with margin expanding to 16.9% from 13.3%, and operating profit rose to $19 million from $7 million. Management raised its full-year 2026 guidance to revenue of $4.1 billion to $4.15 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $720 million to $740 million, and authorized another $750 million share repurchase program, bringing cumulative repurchase authorization since 2024 to $1.75 billion. Financial Services revenue grew 59% to $134 million while its gross loan portfolio reached $2.3 billion, up 197%, though the segment posted negative adjusted EBITDA of $15 million, and total incentives reached $706 million in the quarter. On September 15, the company agreed to acquire a 60% controlling stake in Atome Financial for $1.49 billion in cash, with the deal expected to close by the third quarter of 2027, and it raised its 2028 targets to $1.7 billion in adjusted EBITDA and more than 30% annual revenue growth from 2025 to 2028.

Nvidia Corporation is adding the Open Agent Safety Platform to its AI infrastructure stack, an open software and reference system for securing AI agents from testing to deployment that combines OpenShell software with Nvidia Sentry on BlueField DPUs to monitor, control, and isolate potentially harmful agent activity. The launch follows recent incidents involving AI agents from OpenAI and Anthropic, including an OpenAI agent breaching Hugging Face, and Nvidia said the new platform could have prevented that breach by controlling agent permissions and isolating suspicious behavior. More than 100 organizations, including major technology and software enterprise companies, are involved in the platform. Nvidia said the main uncertainty for investors is how it will monetize the platform, since OpenShell is open source and works across different CPU architectures, while Sentry is more directly tied to the company's BlueField hardware, and it is still too early to view the platform as a meaningful short-term earnings driver. Nvidia's forward GAAP P/E of 22.79x sits about 56% below its 5-year average of 51.72x, and its forward price-to-sales ratio of 13.33x is about 32% below its 5-year average of 19.70x. As of July 26, Nvidia held $22.44 billion in cash and cash equivalents and $34.14 billion in marketable debt securities, against about $33.37 billion in total debt, while hedge fund ownership rose from 275 funds at the end of Q1 2026 to 285 funds at the end of Q2 2026 and short interest stood at just 1.27% of float as of September 15, 2026.

Arista Networks raised its 2026 revenue guidance to US$12.60 billion, including at least US$3.50 billion from AI-related business, after reporting second-quarter fiscal 2026 revenue of US$3.00 billion, a 37.7% year-over-year increase. The higher outlook underscores how AI-driven cloud networking has become a central revenue pillar for the company, shaping its growth mix across hyperscale and enterprise customers. Arista was also added to the S&P 100 in September 2026, a move that reflects its growing weight in large-cap U.S. equity indices just as management ties more of its outlook to AI-related revenue. The company's longer-range narrative projects US$21.4 billion in revenue and US$8.2 billion in earnings by 2029, requiring 26.6% yearly revenue growth and an earnings increase of about US$4.2 billion from US$4.0 billion today. Some of the lowest-ranked analysts had already assumed about US$18.6 billion of 2029 revenue and US$6.9 billion of earnings before this guidance, illustrating how differently Arista's AI exposure and long-term supply commitments can be read.

Bybit announced a collaboration with Franklin Templeton that lets eligible traders use Benji-issued money market fund shares as off-exchange collateral on the crypto platform, extending the asset manager's push into tokenized finance. Franklin Templeton shares trade at US$32.81, with a year to date share price return of 37.86% and a 1-year total shareholder return of 44.68%, while shorter-term momentum has faded with the 30-day share price return down 5.53% and the 90-day share price return down 4.73%. The company is building on its earlier tokenized funds and blockchain enabled products, including the BENJI tokenized money fund, by adding 3.2b of digital asset AUM and acquiring 250 Digital, and by embedding tokenized funds into partner wallets such as MoonPay and Payward. A widely followed narrative pegs fair value at $35.50, above the last close of $32.81, while the stock trades at 22x earnings, below the US Capital Markets industry on 39.7x and peers at 35.9x but above the fair ratio of 12.8x. Franklin Templeton's story could still shift if fee pressure from large platforms intensifies or if integration across its expanded credit and digital franchises stumbles.

Schneider Electric is nearing an agreement to acquire U.S. engineering software company PTC for more than $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported, citing a person familiar with the discussions. A transaction could be announced as early as Monday morning, the person said, and the potential deal was reported earlier Sunday by the Financial Times. Neither Schneider Electric nor PTC has commented on the potential deal, which if completed would be the largest acquisition in Schneider Electric's history, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. PTC develops software used by manufacturers for product design, product lifecycle management and connected industrial operations, and adding those capabilities could deepen Schneider's push toward integrating software with the equipment and automation systems used by industrial customers. The potential acquisition would follow another recent Schneider deal: the company last month agreed to acquire smart-device maker Shelly Group for €1.2 billion, or about $1.35 billion.

Jim Cramer said he expects Chipotle Mexican Grill to bounce off its recent level, telling a caller on Mad Money that the stock has been at this price before and he thinks it will do so again. The comments came as the company reported quarterly revenue of $3.3 billion, up 9.3% year-over-year and ahead of consensus, with comparable restaurant sales up 2.2% on a 1% rise in transaction volume and a 1.2% increase in average check size. Digital sales accounted for 38.3% of total food and beverage revenue, and the company opened 100 new restaurants during the quarter, including 80 with the Chipotlane drive-thru format. Restaurant-level operating margins stood at 25.2%, compressed by wage inflation, higher utility expenses and expanded marketing costs, while management targets at least 7,000 restaurants across North America. Insider Monkey data showed 63 hedge funds held the stock at the end of the second quarter, down from 68, with Arrowstreet Capital the largest tracked holder after raising its position 29% to 21.24 million shares, and short interest at 3.6% of the public float.

Adobe announced in late September 2026 a partnership making it the National Hockey League's Official Creative, Marketing and AI Partner, alongside a multi-year AI-powered customer experience collaboration with Jet2 to personalise holiday planning and travel content. The two alliances place Adobe's CX Enterprise, Firefly and GenStudio tools at the centre of large-scale customer engagement programs spanning sport and travel, with the Jet2 deal serving as a concrete proof point for CX Enterprise Coworker and agentic AI in a high-volume consumer setting. Adobe's investment narrative projects $33.4 billion in revenue and $9.5 billion in earnings by 2029, requiring 8.7% yearly revenue growth and roughly a $2.2 billion earnings increase from $7.3 billion today, and yields a $275.06 fair value representing 16% upside to the current price. More cautious analysts assume only about US$32.6 billion of revenue and US$9.3 billion of earnings by 2029, citing AI pricing pressure and ARR growth risk. The deals do not on their own remove near-term pressure around slowing net new ARR or the risk that AI pricing competition and the upcoming CEO transition unsettle earnings and sentiment.

Advanced Micro Devices has entered a definitive agreement to acquire World Labs, the AI model and research lab led by AI pioneer Dr. Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock transaction valued at $8.2 billion that is expected to close by the end of 2026. Rosenblatt reiterated its Buy rating and $700 price target on AMD following the announcement, saying the deal could expand the chipmaker's AI software, modeling and simulation capabilities and accelerate its development of system-level AI platforms while opening opportunities in markets such as robotics. As part of the transaction, Dr. Fei-Fei Li will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist. The acquisition carries risks: because AMD will pay the full $8.2 billion purchase price in stock, existing shareholders will be diluted, and the deal does not immediately translate into chip revenue or earnings. The transaction also adds execution and integration risk at a time when AMD's valuation already reflects substantial AI growth expectations, with the stock up more than 180% year-to-date as of October 2 and the company valued at more than $1 trillion. Hedge fund interest rose in the second quarter, with 164 hedge funds holding AMD at the end of the period, up from 134 in the first quarter, while the stock trades at a P/E ratio of 156.79; in Q2 2026 AMD's revenue rose 50% year-over-year to $11.5 billion and diluted EPS jumped 156% to $1.38, and management expects Q3 revenue of approximately $13 billion, about 41% year-over-year growth.

Tesla's third-quarter deliveries beat company-compiled analyst expectations by 5.3%, though they declined 2.1% from a year earlier, a drop partly cushioned by Q3 2025's tax credit boost. Seeking Alpha analyst Oliver Rodzianko said the biggest takeaway is that traditional EV demand remains resilient as Tesla pivots toward autonomous taxi services and humanoid robotics as its dominant operating models, while energy storage deployment numbers missed expectations. Rodzianko noted that Chinese rival BYD saw its battery-electric passenger-car sales rise 30.9% year-over-year in the third quarter, underscoring fierce competition in China. Analyst Alexander Grover argued the delivery number is a distraction, since Tesla's valuation assumes unsupervised self-driving at scale, and flagged that Alphabet's Waymo is running more than 500,000 paid driverless rides a week across 15 U.S. metros with LiDAR in its stack, while Tesla still does not disclose how many of its robotaxis run without a safety monitor.

Costco Wholesale Corporation closed fiscal 2026 with total revenue of $276.4 billion, up 8.1% year over year, as the warehouse retailer reported net sales of $93.87 billion, up 11.2%, and net income of $2.998 billion in its September 24 earnings call. Membership remains the engine of the business, with 84.1 million paid members, including 42.3 million Executive tier members, a group that grew 9.4% and pushed that tier's share of the base to a new high, while renewal rates rose to 92.3% in the US and Canada and 89.8% worldwide. Membership fee income climbed 7.3% to $1.849 billion, and management plans 33 openings in fiscal 2027 as it works toward 30 net new warehouses a year, with digitally enabled sales topping $33 billion on growth above 20%. The quarter was not spotless, as reported gross margin slipped to 11.02% from 11.13% a year earlier and the LIFO charge jumped to $152 million from $43 million, tied to pricier memory in electronics and Middle East conflict costs for gas, motor oil, and resins, while tariff refunds added $0.15 per share and the $184 million received covers only about a third of the expected recovery. With the stock trading near historical valuation highs at a forward P/E of 40.32 and hedge fund ownership slipping to 104 funds from 107, the debate now centers on whether membership loyalty and the expansion plan can keep earnings growing into a premium that leaves little room for a stumble.

Scholastic reported a first-quarter net loss of $71.2 million, or $3.77 per share, on revenue that slipped 4% to $216.8 million, while management left its full-year targets untouched. The quarter is the quietest stretch of Scholastic's year, making up only 14% of full-year revenue last year, so the real test is the fall, where Book Fairs bookings and fair counts are both running ahead of last year and the company is reaching new school communities including Christian schools. Content catalysts are stacking up: an HBO adaptation of Harry Potter arrives this Christmas, a new Dog Man title lands in November alongside a Hunger Games film, and entertainment revenue rose 48% to $20.1 million on heavier production activity. The balance sheet improved as net debt fell to $86.8 million from $242.8 million a year earlier, largely on sale-leaseback deals completed in December 2025, and the company bought back $25.8 million of its own stock during the quarter. Still, education revenue fell $9.7 million to $30.4 million amid higher district staffing costs and the end of ESSER pandemic relief funding in March, overhead climbed $5 million to $23.3 million, and free cash use for the quarter was $110.8 million, worse than last year's $100.2 million, leaving full-year adjusted EBITDA targets of $135 million to $145 million and free cash flow of $35 million to $40 million to be built on top of a first-quarter adjusted EBITDA loss of $63.6 million.

Accenture reported fourth-quarter results on October 1 that beat its own revenue guidance, with revenue of $18.7 billion, up 7% in local currency, and bookings of $22.2 billion outrunning revenue. Every geography and both consulting and managed services grew at that same 7% pace, and managed services set a fourth-quarter record at $12.8 billion. The company ended fiscal 2026 with nearly 110,000 AI and data professionals, past its 80,000 target, while more than 400 clients began advanced AI projects during the year and bookings from its eight emerging AI and data partners more than tripled. Free cash flow reached $11.6 billion, about 1.4 times net income, and Accenture returned $11.5 billion to shareholders through $7.5 billion of buybacks and $4 billion of dividends, with at least $9.5 billion planned for fiscal 2027 and a quarterly dividend of $1.71 per share, up 5%, already declared. Fiscal 2027 guidance calls for 3% to 6% revenue growth in local currency, with 2% to 2.5% of that from acquisitions, and earnings per share guided to climb 3% to 6%, while the shares carry a forward P/E of 12.41 as of October 2.

Jabil reported fourth-quarter revenue up 29% year over year and core earnings per share up 34% to $4.40, and guided fiscal 2027 core EPS to $17.55, another gain of about 34%. The company generated $14.4 billion of AI-related revenue in fiscal 2026 and expects $22.1 billion in fiscal 2027, a 54% increase, with six customers in the segment expected to top $1 billion each in fiscal 2027. Jabil supported $36.0 billion of revenue in fiscal 2026 on just $470 million of net capital spending, lifting core return on invested capital to 59%, nearly triple the fiscal 2020 level, and buybacks absorbed about $1.1 billion of free cash flow during the year. On the risk side, chief supply chain officer Francis McKay said memory is being pulled toward AI and hyperscale buyers, squeezing other markets, and Connected Living is expected to shrink 15% to $2.3 billion, while healthcare fell short in the fourth quarter on equipment delays and a slipped customer program. Jabil is adding more than $8.5 billion of revenue in fiscal 2027, which management called unprecedented, and a second hyperscale customer is expected to pass 10% of total revenue, while net inventory days of 64 remain above the 55 to 60 day target.

TC Energy Corporation has confirmed that Coastal GasLink Phase 2 will proceed following LNG Canada's expansion decision, nearly doubling capacity along the existing 670-kilometre route in British Columbia through new compressor stations and facility upgrades. Construction on the expansion is expected to start in early 2027, with service targeted for the early 2030s. The company also declared a continued quarterly dividend of C$0.8775 per share, or C$3.51 annualized. TC Energy's narrative projects CA$18.2 billion in revenue and CA$5.3 billion in earnings by 2029, with a fair value estimate of CA$98.78 implying 17% upside to the current price. Two fair value estimates from the Simply Wall St Community span from C$33.89 to C$98.78.

Vor Biopharma reported a post hoc analysis from a China-based Phase 3 trial showing that telitacicept produced deep, durable clinical responses and was generally well tolerated over 48 weeks in adults with generalized myasthenia gravis. The analysis highlighted that most patients who reached minimal symptom expression maintained it and spent much of their remaining follow-up in this state. The new data reinforce the depth and durability of response but do not materially change the key near-term catalyst, the UPSTREAM global Phase 3 topline readout in 2027, or the central risk that global data might not match prior China experience. The results sit beside Vor's completion of enrollment in the global UPSTREAM Phase 3 gMG trial in early September 2026. Vor Biopharma's narrative projects $111.0 million revenue and $19.1 million earnings by 2029, implying an earnings decrease of $608.7 million from $627.8 million today, and forecasts a $39.00 fair value, a 109% upside to its current price.

Corpay has expanded its Corpay Complete platform with several new AI agents that automate expense analysis, voice driven expense creation, virtual card issuance, and transaction coding across corporate, fleet, and vendor payments. The new tools are being rolled out to eligible Corpay Complete customers this month and are designed to centralize spend data, strengthen finance grade controls, and streamline workflows for finance teams. The rollout lands on top of earlier product updates in April and July, and comes as Corpay has raised its 2026 cash EPS guidance to $27.35 and plans to use divestiture proceeds for repurchases, alongside roughly $15b of available capital for buybacks and targeted corporate payments deals. Corpay closed at $394.60, while the most followed narrative pegs fair value at $461.00, implying 14.4% undervaluation, though on a P/E lens CPAY trades at 22.9x versus a US Diversified Financial industry average of 16.6x, a peer average of 16.9x, and a fair ratio of 16.8x. The company also faces pressure if the proposed US$100m U.S. Vehicle Payments settlement reshapes fuel card pricing or if organic growth underperforms current analyst assumptions.

Goldman Sachs expects the S&P 500 to deliver another strong earnings season, with artificial intelligence investment driving an increasingly large share of corporate profit growth, according to an Oct. 2 report led by strategist Ben Snider. Consensus forecasts call for S&P 500 earnings per share to rise 27% from a year earlier in the third quarter, a slowdown from the 33% growth recorded in the second quarter after excluding accounting distortions, and Goldman expects most companies to beat consensus estimates again. The headline growth rate masks an unusually concentrated picture: information technology and energy are expected to generate nearly 80% of the index's earnings growth, AI infrastructure companies alone are expected to account for more than half of S&P 500 EPS growth, and the 10 biggest contributors are forecast to generate 68% of that growth, with Micron Technology and Nvidia together accounting for more than one-third. Micron has already reported, posting year-over-year earnings growth of 1,003% and beating consensus estimates. For the median S&P 500 company the outlook is considerably less spectacular, with consensus forecasts calling for EPS growth of 9%, down from 14% in the second quarter, revenue growth slowing to 6% from 7%, and a third-quarter net margin of 14.7% versus 15.1% in the previous quarter. The coming reports could also test whether enormous AI investments are translating into revenue, with consensus forecasts calling for hyperscaler capital spending to jump 116% from a year earlier in the third quarter, accelerating from 87% growth in the second, and Goldman expecting hyperscaler capex to grow more than 50% in 2027 and exceed the roughly $1.1 trillion currently embedded in consensus forecasts. Goldman forecasts S&P 500 EPS of $375 for 2026, up 36% from 2025, followed by $415 in 2027, with a year-end 2026 S&P 500 target of 8,000 and a 12-month target of 8,700.

Halliburton confirmed to Argentine authorities in early October 2026 that it and its subsidiaries will not work on the Malvinas Islands' Sea Lion project or conduct any hydrocarbon activities in the surrounding area, while separately signing memoranda of understanding with Eneva S.A. and WESCA to support oil and gas development opportunities in Venezuela. The two moves together reframe Halliburton's regional exposure, regulatory risk profile and future contract pipeline across Latin America, with the Venezuela agreements offsetting some perceived lost optionality around Malvinas through a different Latin American pathway for international revenue, offshore and unconventional exposure. Those agreements sit alongside recent multi-year wins in Suriname, Brazil and Cyprus, reinforcing that the key short-term catalyst remains Halliburton's ability to execute on higher-complexity international contracts at acceptable margins and with controlled start-up costs. Halliburton's narrative projects $25.1 billion in revenue and $2.7 billion in earnings by 2029, requiring 3.9% yearly revenue growth and an earnings increase of about $1.1 billion from $1.6 billion today, and yields a $43.44 fair value, a 36% upside to its current price. More optimistic analysts had already assumed revenues of about US$26.8 billion and earnings near US$3.4 billion before the Venezuela and Malvinas news, while other fair value estimates put the stock as low as $34.03.