Weekend Update #286
Thank you for your continued support and engagement. Each week, we're sharing what companies we're researching and the what, the who and the how that we think makes the companies interesting and unique. This roundup is brought to you weekly by a group of interns, creative minds, artists and investors who believe that through best in class investing along with the democratization of financial education we can do great things together. Enjoy, Explore and Share.
Equities closed a volatile week lower as an escalating Iran conflict and a surge in oil prices overshadowed an early-week bounce in beaten-down chipmakers. Semiconductor names staged a relief rally Monday and Tuesday after posting their worst week in more than a year, but the recovery faded as Brent crude neared $100 a barrel on reports of Houthi attacks on Saudi tankers in the Red Sea. President Trump's threat of a "massive attack" on Iran, coupled with the collapse of a fragile US-Iran ceasefire, kept traders on edge into Friday's close. New US tariffs of 10% to 12.5% on roughly 60 trading partners took effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday, adding a fresh layer of uncertainty even as oil continued flowing from Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast via alternate routes. Big Tech earnings, led by disappointing reactions to Alphabet and Tesla results, compounded the tech-sector weakness that dragged the Nasdaq to its underperformance for the week.
Labor market data continued to defy expectations of a slowdown, with initial jobless claims falling by 22,000 to 187,000 in the week ended July 18 — the lowest level since 1969 and well below the 210,000 median forecast. Continuing claims held roughly steady at 1.8 million, reinforcing the picture of a tight labor market even as some economists note softer labor force participation may be masking underlying weakness. Treasury yields, meanwhile, climbed to their highest levels of 2026 as oil-driven inflation fears fed into rate expectations, with two-year yields reaching around 4.34% and thirty-year yields touching 5.19%. Swaps markets moved to price in roughly a 35% chance of a quarter-point Fed hike at the July meeting, up sharply from about 10% a week earlier, with a hike now fully priced in by September. The combination of resilient employment, oil-fueled price pressure, and a hawkish repricing of Fed expectations is stoking stagflation concerns that could weigh on sentiment into next week's policy decision.
Alphabet rattled AI-spending sentiment after raising its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to a range of $195 billion to $205 billion, even as the company posted negative free cash flow for the first time since going public, despite cloud revenue climbing 82% year-over-year to $24.77 billion and a backlog swelling to $514 billion. Tesla's profit was also squeezed as spending on AI and robotics initiatives surged to $5.8 billion in the quarter, triggering the company's first cash burn in two years, though it still expects more than $25 billion in capital expenditures this year. In chip news, AMD agreed to invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic as part of a broader deal in which Anthropic will purchase up to 2 gigawatts of AMD's Instinct MI450 chips starting in early 2027, while Samsung and SK Hynix are expected to unveil large memory-chip supply agreements with US tech firms during President Lee Jae Myung's Silicon Valley visit. TSMC is reportedly discussing chip price increases of up to 10% for 2027, and Qualcomm notified customers of double-digit price increases effective for products shipped after September 1, citing persistent supply shortages across the semiconductor industry. Anthropic separately rolled out Opus 5, a lower-cost model aimed at everyday workplace tasks, as competition in AI intensifies.
Geopolitical risk remains the dominant swing factor heading into next week, with Trump signaling he may order a broader military strike on Iran while Houthi militants continue to threaten Red Sea shipping lanes that could further disrupt oil flows. Markets will watch closely for the Federal Reserve's next policy signals following this week's sharp repricing of hike odds, particularly if oil prices continue their climb toward triple digits. The newly imposed 10% to 12.5% tariffs on roughly 60 economies will be tested for their economic impact, with exemptions in place for goods that cannot be produced domestically or where disruption risk is judged too severe. Samsung and SK Hynix's Silicon Valley announcements may crystallize into concrete details on AI data center sites and engineering partnerships in the coming days. Investors will also continue monitoring Big Tech's AI capital-spending trajectory following Alphabet and Tesla's results.
Friday's Close
(Weekly Performance)
S&P 500 7,411.98 (-0.61%)
Nasdaq 24,975.82 (-2.13%)
Dow Jones 51,947.25 (-0.38%)
Thank you Blue Room Senior Analyst Nick Peart.
Jen-Chau Huang
Senior VP & CFO
Thank you, Jeff. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. My presentation will start with financial highlights for the second quarter of 2026. After that, I will provide the guidance for the third quarter of 2026. Now let's move on to revenue by technology. 2–nanometer process technology contributed 3% of wafer revenue in the second quarter; 3–nanometer, 5–nanometer and 7–nanometer accounted for 30%, 33% and 11%, respectively; advanced technology, defined as 7–nanometer and below, accounted for 77% of wafer revenue.
Moving on to revenue contribution by platform. High Performance Compute increased 20% quarter–over–quarter to account for 66% of our second quarter revenue. Smartphones decreased 4% to account for 22%. IoT increased 4% to account for 5%. Automotive increased 15% to account for 4%. DCE increased 5% to account for 1%.
Moving on to the balance sheet. We ended the second quarter with cash and marketable securities of TWD 3.5 trillion or USD $110 billion. On the liability side, current liabilities increased by TWD 144 billion quarter-over-quarter, mainly due to the increase of TWD 58 billion in accounts payable and the increase of TWD 48 billion in accrued liabilities and others. In terms of financial ratios, accounts receivable days increased by 3 days to 29 days. Inventory days increased 7 days to 87 days, primarily due to the ramp of N2 technology. Regarding cash flow and CapEx. During the second quarter, we generated about TWD 783 billion in cash from operations, spent TWD 496 billion in CapEx and distributed TWD 156 billion for the third quarter 2025 cash dividend. Overall, our cash balance increased TWD 99 billion to TWD 3.1 trillion at the end of the quarter.
2026 07 20 BLUE ROOM: TSMC
BLUE ROOM Investment Team Bullpen
Monday, July 20, 2026
8:30 AM MDT / 9:30 PM Hanoi
Model update:
TXN Q2 2026 Review
by Minyoung Sohn
and NOW Q2 2026 Preview
Disclosure:
This video is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
Our second quarter showed continued progress against the strategy we set at our Capital Markets Day. Our team is focused on maximizing our opportunity in the AI super cycle and that focus is translating into early results. I'm pleased with the progress that Team Nokia has made in the first half of 2026.
In Q2, net sales grew 9%. We expanded our gross margin by 70 basis points to 46% and our operating margin by 70 basis points to 9%. Network Infrastructure delivered strong growth led by optical and IP networks, with sales from AI and cloud customers more than doubling year-on-year. Mobile Infrastructure sales also grew and the business delivered stable profitability largely driven by product mix. Marco will take you through the details of our financial performance in his update in a moment.
2026 07 23 BLUE ROOM: NOK
Thursday, July 23, 2026
9:30 AM MDT
Model update:
NOK Q2 2026 Review
by Jared Fenley
Disclosure:
This video is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
Presentation
Mike Beckman
VP & Head of Investor Relations
Welcome to the Texas Instruments Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. I am Mike Beckman, Head of Investor Relations. For any of you who missed the release, you can find it on our website at ti.com/ir. This call is being broadcast live over the web and can be accessed through our website. In addition, today's call is being recorded and will be available via replay on our website. This call will include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause TI's results to differ materially from management's current expectations. We encourage you to review the notice regarding forward-looking statements contained in the earnings release published today as well as TI's most recent SEC filings for a more complete description. Today, I'm joined by our Chief Executive Officer, Haviv Ilan; and our
Chief Financial Officer, Rafael Lizardi.
Also with us today is Julie Knecht, who will become our Chief Financial Officer on August 1. Julie has been with TI for more than 25 years and has held a number of finance and accounting roles, most recently serving as Chief Accounting Officer since 2021. As you know, Rafael, who has been our CFO for nearly a decade, plans to retire at the end of August. Rafael's focus on disciplined capital allocation, including our investments in 300-millimeter manufacturing capacity and commitment to return all free cash flow to shareholders, have positioned TI for continued long-term growth and value creation. As this is Rafael's final earnings call, I want to thank him personally for all of his contributions to TI. I'm sure you will join me in congratulating both Rafael and Julie.
With that, today, we'll provide the following updates. First, Haviv will start with a quick overview of the quarter. Next, he will provide insight into second quarter revenue results with some details on what we're seeing with respect to our end markets. Lastly, Rafael will cover the financial results and give an update on capital management as well as share the guidance for third quarter 2026. With that, let me turn it over to Haviv.
2026 07 23 BLUE ROOM: TXN
Thursday, July 23, 2026
9:30 AM MDT
Model update:
TXN Q2 2026 Review
by Minyoung Sohn
and NOW Q2 2026 Preview
Disclosure:
This video is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
Bill McDermott
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
I looked at the transcript from an earnings call seven years ago. And back then, we said ServiceNow would be the defining enterprise software company of the 21st century. So I want to give you a report out since then. We beat expectations in every quarterly report, expanded the profitability and free cash flow of the company, quintupled our total addressable market, accelerated six of our own unicorns to billion or multi-billion businesses, process billions of workflows and trillions of transactions, grew the partner ecosystem globally, architected the most complete AI Control Tower for the enterprise, maintained our best-in-class renewal rate, increased our brand value, offered our customers deep enterprise context, unlimited choice, and differentiated capabilities. And of course, we set a course to $32 billion in revenue in 2030, operating at the Rule of 60 and beyond.
So today, we're adding a stunning Q2 print to this track record. Subscription revenue growth was 23% in constant currency, 1.5 points above the high-end of our guidance. cRPO growth was 21.5% in constant currency, more than 2 points above our guidance. Operating margin was 29.5%, 3 points above our guidance.We had 123 deals greater than $1 million in net new ACV, up 40% year-over-year. ServiceNow AI ACV exceeded expectations again, surpassing $1 billion, keeping us on track to beat our target of $1.5 billion ACV by the end of 2026. We're feeling real good about it.
What does it all mean? We are who we said we were. The path to value isn't just making AI, it's deploying AI securely across the enterprise. IDC forecast spending on AI software is going to grow 53% this year, 17% faster than AI hardware. Whichever chip wins, whichever lab wins, whichever price per token regime prevails, the enterprise needs one governed layer of record for work, and ServiceNow offers needed certainty in an uncertain stack. Our platform is optionality on all AI outcomes, not a bet on any one. We're in the bullseye of AI, cybersecurity, workflow orchestration, integration, and automation. That's why we're growing fast. It's why we're only just getting started. We are who we said we were.
BLUE ROOM Investment Team Bullpen
Monday, July 20, 2026
8:30 AM MDT / 9:30 PM Hanoi
Contents:
Exchange of greetings and personal updates
Macro and Economics
IBM Q2 2026 Pre–Release
TSMC Q2 2026 Earnings Review
AXP Q2 2026 Earnings Preview
Disclosure:
This video is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
BLUE ROOM Investment Team Bullpen
Monday, July 20, 2026
8:30 AM MDT / 9:30 PM Hanoi
Macro Update + Economics Desk
Disclosure:
This video is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
BLUE ROOM Investment Team Bullpen
Thursday, July 23, 2026
9:30 AM MDT
Model update:
TSLA Q2 2026 Review
by Nick Peart
and NOW Q2 2026 Preview
Disclosure:
This video is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
10% OF ALL BLUE ROOM REVENUES GO DIRECTLY TO FUND OUR NON PROFIT TOGETHERISM.
WE CAN ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING TOGETHER.
These materials do not purport to be all-inclusive or to contain all the information that a prospective investor may desire in considering an investment. These materials are intended merely for preliminary discussion only and may not be relied upon for making any investment decision. Any discussion or information contained in this presentation does not serve as a receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice from Blueroom or your advisor.
This publication does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any securities in any fund, market sector, strategy or any other product. Investing is speculative and involves substantial risks (including, the risk of loss of the investor’s entire investment). Past performance is not indicative of future results, and there can be no assurance that the future performance of any specific investment, investment strategy, or product will be profitable.
For more information about us and our general disclosures contact us directly.