Cloud & Digital Infrastructure

Progress Software reported third-quarter results on September 30, 2026, showing revenue down 2% to $246 million while non-GAAP earnings per share rose 13% to $1.69, as expenses fell about 6% and operating margin expanded to 43% from 40% a year earlier. Adjusted free cash flow grew 17% to $87 million, with days sales outstanding dropping to 42 from 73 at the end of fiscal 2025, funding $170 million of debt paydown this year and $17 million of buybacks in the quarter. The company closed the largest acquisition in its history, paying $400 million for Domo, or 1.4 times revenue and 3.5 times pro forma EBITDA, and management expects Domo to add well over $100 million in annual EBITDA once integration finishes by the end of fiscal 2027. Progress drew $390 million on its revolver, leaving total debt near $1.24 billion and net leverage around 2.7 times, and management warned Domo will run slightly below a 30% operating margin while synergies ramp, pulling overall margin to 36% to 37% from its usual 38% to 39% with roughly $21 million of added interest expense. Annual recurring revenue rose only about 1% on a pro forma basis with net retention at 99%, hedge fund holders fell to 23 from 29 in the prior quarter, and short sellers hold 16.69% of the float against a forward P/E of 6.47 as of October 2.

Topicus.com confirmed in early October 2026 that long-time executive Ramon Zanders has taken over as CEO from Robin van Poelje, who remains Chairman. The leadership change has sharpened investor focus on how Zanders will handle capital allocation, acquisition discipline, organic growth and margins. The most relevant backdrop to the transition is the revised non binding proposal to acquire ReadyTech Holdings at up to A$2.00 per share in cash, a live test of Topicus.com's acquisition discipline, integration capability and capital deployment under Zanders. The company's narrative projects €2.5 billion in revenue and €631.7 million in earnings by 2029, requiring 13.2% yearly revenue growth and about a €596 million earnings increase from €35.4 million today, with a CA$144.65 fair value implying 61% upside to the current price. Five members of the Simply Wall St Community currently estimate Topicus.com's fair value between CA$128.42 and CA$170.81, and the key short term question is whether the company can close the ReadyTech proposal on acceptable terms.

Oracle and We Energies announced a nuclear power subscription deal on October 2, 2026, under which Oracle will take 10-20% of the output from the Point Beach Nuclear Plant, or 125-250 megawatts, for the $15 billion Lighthouse Campus AI data center in Port Washington, Wisconsin. The campus, co-developed by Oracle, OpenAI, and Vantage Data Centers as part of the broader Stargate initiative, is designed to house close to 1 gigawatt of AI capacity within a 1.3 gigawatt total electrical footprint, with completion targeted for 2028. Oracle has committed to fully funding the energy costs for its portion, and the deal is the primary driver of a proposed $176 million electric rate hike for We Energies customers in 2027, accounting for roughly 20% of that increase, while the utility projects the arrangement will save customers approximately $300 million in fuel costs between 2027 and 2033. The subscription, a first-of-its-kind model in Wisconsin, requires approval from the Wisconsin Public Service Commission, which is weighing whether to require tech companies to cover 100% of new power plant costs. The deal is part of an industry-wide pivot in which Big Tech has contracted over 10 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity in the United States over the past year, including Microsoft's 20-year power purchase agreement for the 835-megawatt restart of Three Mile Island, Amazon's acquisition of a nuclear-adjacent Pennsylvania campus for over $650 million and its $500 million investment in X-energy small modular reactors, and Google's order of 500 megawatts from Kairos Power. Data center power demand reached 29.6 gigawatts by late 2025, equivalent to the peak demand of New York state, and the International Energy Agency projects it will rise by 130% by 2030, even as U.S. nuclear output stayed largely flat between 2020 and 2025 and no small modular reactors are under construction in the country.

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said the company has stopped using nondisclosure agreements in its dealings with government agencies as it seeks approval to build new data centers. The statement came in a blog post in which Garman pushed back against widespread suspicion of data centers, noting that more than 100 data center moratoriums are currently being considered across the United States after New York announced a one-year moratorium on permits for large data centers. Garman argued that direct data center water consumption accounts for only 0.5% of all industrial water usage in the United States, and that where energy rates are rising it is primarily because the grid is old and has not been invested in and expanded before the demand arrived. He also said data center generators are idle 99.9% of the time, running roughly 10 hours per year, and that Amazon has contributed more than $1 billion to communities across the U.S. in which it has a meaningful data center presence over the past three years. Critics remain unconvinced, with an independent watchdog recently blaming data centers for a 76% year-over-year price increase on America's largest electrical grid.

Larry Ellison's dual role as backer of Paramount Skydance Corp. and controlling shareholder of Oracle Corp. is stirring concern on Wall Street as both companies pile on debt. Paramount took on $52 billion of additional debt this week to help pay for its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., while Oracle has nearly doubled its long-term debt to more than $160 billion over the past two years as it builds out AI computing capacity, making it the fifth-largest borrower in the US corporate bond market. The cost to insure the debt of both companies against default has converged and is increasingly moving in lock-step, a sign investors are beginning to treat the two credits as intertwined. Ellison, 82, is backstopping Paramount's takeover of Warner Bros., spearheaded by his son David, via a family trust that guaranteed a significant portion of the roughly $47 billion of equity financing for the deal, and the family pledged to take all necessary steps to bring leverage down in the coming years. His fortune has plummeted by almost $200 billion over the past year, though he is still worth roughly $192 billion, and he recently canceled a plan to sell billions of dollars worth of Oracle stock and disclosed he had increased the number of shares pledged as collateral for personal loans. S&P cut Oracle to BBB- in July and lowered Paramount's issuer credit rating to BB last month, and Oracle shares have fallen more than 50% over the past year.

Nscale has hired Justin Osofsky, a long-term executive at Meta Platforms, to be its chief operating officer to drive rapid expansion at the AI infrastructure company ahead of its upcoming IPO, Bloomberg News reported, citing a person familiar with the matter. Osofsky, who served Meta for 18 years in various capacities and was most recently its chief partnerships officer, will report to Nscale CEO Josh Payne and lead the company's global operations. A slate of Meta veterans, including former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, already serve Nscale, a neo-cloud operator that rents out computing power to AI developers; Sandberg, who sits on the company's board, helped hire Nick Clegg, the Facebook operator's former head of global affairs, and Fidji Simo, a former OpenAI executive. In September, the London-based data center operator filed for a U.S. IPO, an offering expected to raise as much as $3B, Bloomberg previously reported. Meta announced the resignation in an internal post, with Chief Operating Officer Javier Olivan noting that Osofsky had brought sound judgment and steady leadership that will outlast his time here.

Sinch's fair value estimate has been lifted to about SEK 44.83 from SEK 41.00, a roughly 9.3% increase, as analysts diverge sharply on the company's growth and execution outlook. Cantor Fitzgerald upgraded Sinch to Overweight from Neutral with a SEK 43 price target, while JPMorgan raised its target to SEK 66 from SEK 45 and kept an Overweight rating. On the bearish side, Pareto initiated coverage with a Sell rating and a SEK 35 target, and DNB Carnegie cut the stock to Hold from Buy with a SEK 55 target. The revised valuation also reflects revenue growth moving from about 4.32% to roughly 6.14%, profit margin from about 4.07% to roughly 5.07%, and a future P/E shifting from about 22.82x to roughly 19.32x. The analyst debate centers on Sinch's use of AI, machine learning and partnerships with platforms like Salesforce and Microsoft, the role of omnichannel messaging and RCS rollout in its revenue mix, and execution risks including slow organic net sales growth and competitive pressure in U.S. messaging.

The central fair value estimate for Nebius Group has been lowered to US$283.58 from US$312.67, reflecting more cautious Street research that weighs enthusiasm for the company's AI-focused cloud infrastructure against concerns over valuation, capital needs and execution risk. The revision came alongside adjustments to the underlying model assumptions: the revenue growth assumption moved from 181.88% to 179.89%, the net profit margin input from 7.91% to 6.96%, the future P/E multiple from 57.25x to 59.17x, and the discount rate from 8.63% to 8.73%. On the bullish side, William Blair described Nebius as not just another neocloud, citing infrastructure scale, software capabilities and major customer relationships, while Buy and Outperform ratings from Goldman Sachs, Citi, BofA, Baird, Truist, Northland, Freedom Capital and BNP Paribas carried price targets in some cases above US$300, and above US$400 and US$390 for Northland and BNP Paribas respectively. On the bearish side, Rothschild & Co Redburn initiated coverage with a Sell rating and a US$84 price target, questioning whether equity markets fully reflect leverage and off-balance-sheet commitments tied to AI infrastructure, while Piper Sandler and BTG Pactual sat at Neutral with price targets in the low US$200s, flagging a more balanced risk and reward profile including earlier concerns around the Vineland data center and comparisons with peer CoreWeave.

S&P Dow Jones Indices announced that Workiva will join the S&P SmallCap 600, replacing Formfactor Inc. in the index prior to the opening of trading on Tuesday, October 6, as part of a series of component shifts across multiple benchmarks. Shares of the cloud reporting platform jumped 3.3% in the morning session on the news, then cooled to $71.74, up 3% from the previous close. Index additions frequently generate positive market sentiment because investment funds that track the benchmark must adjust their portfolios to include the newly designated member. Workiva's shares are very volatile and have had 23 moves greater than 5% over the last year, and the stock is down 13.5% since the beginning of the year. At $71.74 per share, it trades 23.1% below its 52-week high of $93.31 from November 2025.

Microsoft generated $182.94 billion of fiscal 2026 operating cash flow and paid $115.95 billion for property and equipment, leaving $66.99 billion of simple free cash flow that covered its $26.45 billion annual dividend about 2.5 times. After dividends, roughly $40.54 billion remained before repurchases and other claims, and $22.27 billion of buybacks used part of that balance. In the fiscal fourth quarter, management reported $41 billion of capital expenditure including finance leases, compared with $35.8 billion of cash equipment spending, with the separately reported $5.6 billion finance-lease component creating future obligations rather than immediate cash outlays. Holding operating cash flow at $182.94 billion, an additional $20 billion of cash equipment spending would cut simple free cash flow to $46.99 billion and still leave roughly 1.8 times dividend coverage, while an additional $40 billion would leave $26.99 billion, close to the dividend bill before buybacks. At September 30's approximate $3.81 trillion market capitalization, the payout was less than 1% of equity value, and fiscal 2026 simple free cash flow implies approximately 57 times free cash flow. Insider Monkey's hedge fund database showed 273 Microsoft holders in Q2 2026, compared with 282 in Q1, with Fisher Asset Management increasing its share position 3% to 26,611,728.

Cable One, Inc. announced it is in advanced discussions with GTCR LLC, certain of its existing lenders and a consortium of leading private lending institutions regarding financing transactions to address certain of the Company's forthcoming capital needs. Cable One said it is working towards enhancing its capital structure to position the company to drive growth in shareholder value. Chief Executive Officer Jim Holanda said the contemplated financings are intended to strengthen Cable One's overall financial position, while GTCR Managing Director Stephen J. Jeschke said GTCR has been working closely with Cable One to facilitate a potential transaction that would bring new capital into the business. No definitive agreements have been entered into, and there can be no guarantee that any transaction will materialize. Separately, Cable One and GTCR agreed to extend the deadline for completion of Cable One's purchase of the 55% remaining stake it does not already own in Mega Broadband Investments Holdings LLC to October 9, 2026.

Amazon is planning to shift $8 billion worth of Nvidia AI chips off its balance sheet, according to the Financial Times, by creating a special-purpose vehicle that would own the chips and lease them back to the company. Outside investors would be able to buy into that special-purpose vehicle, a structure the report notes is becoming increasingly common among hyperscalers, though Amazon's move is unusual because it already owns the chips, whereas some competitors made such structured chip investments off balance sheet from the start. The model has drawn pushback, most notably from long-term bear Ed Citrone, who called it the dodgiest and most desperate thing he has seen in the bubble so far. Critics argue the main drawback is reduced transparency, since off-balance-sheet treatment obscures financial commitments and leaves unclear who holds the risk and who is owed what and when. The hosts noted that the debt holders in the special-purpose vehicle, not Amazon, would ultimately bear that risk, though the identity of those buyers is not yet known because the deal has not been done.

Oracle is repositioning its database business around cloud consumption, raising the question of whether its historically lucrative database franchise can sustain margins as delivery shifts from licenses to usage. Oracle made Exadata Database Service on Exascale Infrastructure generally available on Oracle AI Database@AWS with pay-per-use pricing, and signed an expanded long-term collaboration agreement with Amazon Web Services to accelerate customer migrations, with the service now spanning 22 AWS Regions. In first-quarter fiscal 2027 results, multicloud database revenues surged 353% year over year, multicloud customers rose 180%, and Oracle completed its planned expansion across Azure and AWS, reaching 70 multicloud database regions. The shift carries margin trade-offs: software revenues, home to legacy license and support streams, declined 3% to $5.5 billion as customers migrated on-premise workloads to the cloud, while pay-per-use pricing lowers entry price points and partner-hosted deployments add capital intensity. Consolidated profitability has held firm so far, with total revenues up 30% to $19.3 billion, non-GAAP operating income up 31% to $8.2 billion, implying a margin of about 42%, and GAAP operating income up 57% to $6.7 billion, though capital expenditures reached $28.5 billion, leaving free cash flow at negative $5 billion, and Oracle expects to raise about $40 billion through debt and equity in fiscal 2027. For the second quarter, Oracle projects revenue growth of 30-34%, cloud revenue growth of 65-71% and non-GAAP EPS of $1.85-$1.93, while for fiscal 2027 it expects revenues of at least $90 billion and non-GAAP EPS of $8.10, supported by remaining performance obligations of $664 billion.