This week, which stocks lagged or dragged? Weekly Winners column keeps up with market trends, helping Tigers sort out the week's hottest sectors, stock winners and important news.
Below are top 10 S&P 500 stock gainers for the week ended Apr. 10:
Intel Stock Jumps 24% After It Extends Google Cloud Partnership for AI Infrastructure
Intel Corporation and Google announced a multiyear collaboration to develop AI and cloud infrastructure, according to a press release statement issued today. Intel shares are trading near their 52-week high of $59.17, reflecting strong investor sentiment with the stock surging 174% over the past year and 60% year-to-date. Shares of the company rose about 24% this week.
The agreement includes continued deployment of Intel Xeon processors across Google Cloud infrastructure for AI, inference and general-purpose workloads. Google Cloud currently uses Intel Xeon 6 processors in its C4 and N4 instances.
Sandisk's Stock Is up 2,000% in a Year - and This Analyst Says It's Still Being Underestimated
Sandisk's stock has already climbed more than 2,000% over the past year, and one analyst sees a scenario where it could rocket nearly 300% further.
Admittedly, that's Bernstein analyst Mark Newman's "blue-sky" scenario linked to a very rosy "bull-case" setup in which the company experiences a "higher and more sustained pricing peak" for its NAND memory offerings. If average selling prices grow 75% sequentially in the March quarter and another 75% sequentially in the June quarter, Newman sees the potential for Sandisk's stock $(SNDK)$ to hit $3,000, up from $852 today.
But his more traditional "base-case" scenario lays out the potential for serious upside, linked to a new $1,250 price target that's about 60% above Wednesday's closing levels. That's based on an assumption that growth in NAND average selling prices peaks at 55% sequentially in the March quarter and then comes down to 40% sequentially in the June quarter.
Lumentum and Coherent Stocks Are the New S&P 500 Standouts. Thank AI Demand
Shares of optical networking giants Lumentum and Coherent rose this week, fueled by price-target hikes and an order forecast stretching through 2028.
It isn't unusual for shares of both optical networking companies to land among the S&P 500's top performers on any given day. Since joining the benchmark index at the end of March, the stocks -- which generally trade in tandem -- have only added to last year's eye-watering gains.
But the stocks were getting an extra boost on Friday after Lumentum's CEO pointed to sustained demand from hyperscalers and both companies received a fresh vote of confidence from J.P. Morgan.
Both Lumentum and Coherent have benefited from a surge in hyperscaler capital spending that has boosted their shares 1,648% and 462%, respectively, over the past 12 months. While players like Nvidia manufacture the AI processors, Lumentum and Coherent make the technology that allows chips to communicate with each other.
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