The latest Market Talks covering Equities. Published exclusively on Dow Jones Newswires throughout the day.
1738 ET - Private equity's large inventory of unsold assets is making it harder for buyout firms to raise capital for new deals, while boosting fundraising across secondary strategies focused on providing liquidity to investors in existing funds. Funds targeting secondary deals are expected to raise $106 billion worldwide this year, slightly more than the total collected last year, according to a report by advisory firm PJT Partners, which specializes in such transactions. In contrast, the adviser projects that primary private-equity fundraising will total $374 billion this year, down roughly 15% from last year. "PJT is also observing a marked shift in allocations to [alternative assets], with a growing number of participants steering capital towards secondaries," the New York firm says. (luis.garcia@wsj.com; @lhvgarcia)
1730 ET - Meta is building new personal agents that it expects to become the foundation of its next wave of products, CEO Mark Zuckerberg says during a call with analysts. The agents will work 24/7 on consumers' behalf, helping to improve their health, relationships, finances and more, he says. While agents have thus far taken off among engineers who are willing to spend time making them work, these consumer-focused agents will need to work right out of the box, and be easy enough for billions of people to use, he says. "We think that consumer personal agents is going to end up being an extremely important and massive market." Five years from now, billions of people will likely have a personal agent that understands their goals, Zuckerberg says.(kelly.cloonan@wsj.com)
1658 ET - Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company's heavy spending on AI is necessary to capture a massive opportunity, and that the investments are now accelerating every major part of its core business. "They're improving the experience for people using our apps, driving better performance for advertisers, and helping our teams build new experiences and ship faster," Zuckerberg says during a call with analysts. "We are investing aggressively because the potential is huge." The company raised the midpoint of its capital expenditures outlook for the year, amid investor worries over big tech companies' AI spending. (kelly.cloonan@wsj.com)
1647 ET - Microsoft gains 3.2% in after-hours trading, as the company's report of 18% revenue growth in the fourth quarter exceeded Wall Street's expectations. Headline metrics include Microsoft 365 Copilot surpassing 30 million paid seats, as well as 27% growth in Microsoft Cloud revenue -- evidence that Microsoft is becoming an important beneficiary of artificial-intelligence adoption, CEO Satya Nadella says. The strong print spares Microsoft, at least for now, from the fate of other technology companies who have failed to convince the market that their heavy AI investments are generating sufficient returns. One such company -- Meta Platforms -- is down 6% post-close after missing Wall Street's profit expectations. (elias.schisgall@wsj.com)
1636 ET - Meta now expects capital expenditures of $130 billion to $145 billion this year, bumping up the bottom end of its prior forecast of $125 billion to $145 billion. The updated guidance comes amid worries about the massive amounts of cash that big tech companies are spending on artificial intelligence. Meta in particular has been piling on debt to fund its AI infrastructure buildout. Shares fell 6.3% in after-hours trading. (kelly.cloonan@wsj.com)
1622 ET - Robinhood Markets reports 44% growth in transaction-based revenues, no thanks to cryptocurrency. Within the segment, revenue from cryptocurrency trades fell 38% to $100 million. Total crypto notional trading volumes were $40 billion, including a 35% drop in Robinhood App Notional Volumes to $18 billion. The drop in crypto activity was eclipsed by record highs in equity, option, and event contract volumes. (elias.schisgall@wsj.com)
1620 ET - Robinhood Markets' prediction markets business continues to pick up steam almost two years after its launch. The company reports a more-than-tenfold increase in event contracts revenue to $156 million, helping drive 44% total growth in transaction-based revenues. The number of event contracts traded also rose more than tenfold to 13.6 billion, the company says. Truist analysts wrote last month that they expected the business to benefit from a World Cup tailwind this summer. (elias.schisgall@wsj.com)
1430 ET - The 12% drop in Corning's stock after its 2Q earnings on Tuesday was overblown, said UBS analysts in a research note. They said that investors are expecting faster growth, but Corning's pushing its contracts to the long term, creating more visibility and stability for its future earnings. In the report, earnings beat expectations in all segments, except solar, which was impacted by start-up costs. The firm also said that Corning is more optimistic about the profitability of its optical business. The analysts reiterate their buy rating. (grace.yoon@wsj.com)
1420 ET - Major cryptocurrencies rise following the Federal Reserve's 9-3 vote to leave interest rates unchanged. Traders were tentative ahead of the decision in anticipation of a potential surprise rate hike supporting a stronger dollar and hitting riskier assets like cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is now up 0.8% to $64,334, while ethereum rises 0.1% to $1,919, XRP is up 2.2% to $1.09, and solana rises 0.1% to $74.10. (kirk.maltais@wsj.com)
1414 ET - Celestica's strong 2Q results, growth profile and extended order visibility are key drivers of its idiosyncratic outperformance, says RBC. In a report, Paul Treiber says Celestica's shares got a boost due to solid 2Q performance and a 2026-2027 outlook above consensus. "Celestica is executing well, with share gains, an increasing mix of high-quality revenue, and improving visibility to growth," he says, pointing to surging demand for AI compute and networking alongside supply agreements for hard-to-source components like memory.Shares are down 6.9% to C$458.82 but are up 64% over the last 52 weeks. (adriano.marchese@wsj.com)
1408 ET - CGI's organic growth should benefit from a stronger pipeline. National Bank of Canada's Doug Taylor notes in a report that organic growth improved sequentially, to a contraction of 1.2% from -3.0% in the previous quarter. This should continue to get better, as U.S. Federal contracts returned to growth with a "strong pipeline across Managed services (+20% Y/Y), SI&C (+30%), IP (+30%) and AI (double Y/Y)," which should help drive bookings and organic growth in the quarters to come, Taylor says. "This reacceleration back into positive territory is a key tenet of our positive near-term thesis," he adds.(adriano.marchese@wsj.com)
1312 ET - SoFi Technologies decided to raise revenue forecasts but not earnings guidance for 2H because of the potential for Fed rate hikes in the months ahead, CEO Anthony Noto tells CNBC. The company's stock is getting dinged despite SoFi beating top and bottom line figures in 2Q. Noto says it wouldn't have been prudent to raise the EPS targets without a better view on where rates will go, after having entered the year with expectations that rates would go down. "I just think higher rates create some uncertainty generally," Noto says, adding, "we just wanted to leave some cushion." SoFi also didn't want to undercut its flow of reinvestment in growth opportunities, including its stablecoin, for a guidance boost, Noto says. SoFi falls 8%.
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