Weekend Update #293
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.
U.S. equities gained this week through volatile trading sessions, even as Treasury yields climbed to their highest levels in nearly two decades. Strong economic data, hawkish Fed speakers, and a weak Treasury auction all drove yields and interest rate expectations higher. AI-linked tech drove the rebound in equities as strong early adoption of Meta’s personal agent, Muse, led to excitement about new economic activity the technology could enable. Geopolitics remained in focus as it was reported the U.S. and Iran were aligning on a technical stage of planning an end to the conflict and a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, but conflicting reports emerged from the Iranian side that they would not reach an agreement until the U.S. agreed to all key terms. Swings in the geopolitical narrative drove a gain in oil prices this week, with Brent crude futures ending the week at $104.57 per barrel. Chinese President Xi Jinping made his first visit to the U.S. in more than a decade this week to meet with President Trump in Washington, D.C. The visit resulted in an extension of the trade truce to January 10, with both sides announcing on a desire to cooperate into the future on key issues like AI development.
In economic data this week, the S&P Global U.S. Manufacturing and Services PMI readings for September showed business activity expanding at the fastest rate in five years, and outside of the COVID pandemic era, it was the highest monthly jump since 2015. The increase was driven by new orders and employment, while input prices grew at the fastest pace since 2022 and wages also increased. The strong economic reading caused an increase in the market-implied probability of an October rate hike to 68.6%, up from 53.1% prior to the report. Initial Jobless Claims for the week ended September 19 were 200,000, slightly higher than the 197,000 consensus estimate. New Home Sales in August surpassed expectations at 684,000 and rose from 643,000 in July. The University of Michigan’s Final Consumer Sentiment for September confirmed a drop in sentiment this month as deteriorating business activity expectations and higher inflation expectations weighed on consumers. The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield ended the week at 5.1667% while the 30-year ended at 5.4950%, highs since 2007 and 2004, respectively.
In company-specific news, Meta Platforms shares rose 11% on Monday as web traffic data showed early adoption of its Muse personal agent outpaced even OpenAI’s ChatGPT early adoption on app downloads. At the company’s annual Connect event on Wednesday, the company shared a vision to keep agentic computing free for users while taking small fees on transactions. The combination sent META shares on track for the best monthly performance since 2013 and reignited excitement in AI-linked companies. Oracle shares pulled back slightly this week after sending a force majeure notice to Blue Owl on its Project Jupiter data center in New Mexico, which seeks to defer payments if the site is not running by 2028. Costco’s fiscal Q4 2026 earnings beat estimates with sales up 11% YoY. McDonald’s shares fell to their lowest level since 2022 after store expansion targets shared at its investor day missed consensus expectations. Viking Therapeutics shares rose 36% after the company reported strong efficacy from a small maintenance dose in one of its GLP-1 therapies, strengthening its competitive positioning against Eli Lilly and Novo. Next week’s key economic data will include the Consumer Confidence report for September on Tuesday, PCE data for August on Wednesday, and the September jobs report on Friday. Micron’s fiscal Q4 2026 earnings are due after market close on Wednesday, and will also help investors gauge the current strength in the AI buildout.
Friday’s Close (Weekly Performance)
S&P 500 7,743.41 (+1.21%)
Nasdaq 27,068.72 (+2.06%)
Dow Jones 51,828.62 (+0.28%)
Thank you Blue Room Senior Analyst JARED FENELY.
Consumer sentiment ticked down less than four index points in September to 48.1, reaching the lowest reading in four months and down 15% from January 2026.
Views of current and year-ahead expected personal finances both weakened about 10% this month, with concerns over high prices continuing to climb.
Buying conditions for durables improved a bit, in part due to a perception that completing such purchases now would help consumers avoid higher prices in the future.
The short-run outlook for business conditions plunged amid renewed worries that elevated fuel prices and re-escalating trade disputes could pass through to the economy as a whole.
Overall, interviews reveal broad agreement across the political spectrum that the outlook for the economy has weakened since the beginning of the year. After particularly large declines in sentiment this month, Republican sentiment is now 20% lower than January 2026; Democrats are down 13% over the same period
Lawrence Biegelsen
Wells Fargo
Okay, welcome back. I'm Larry Biegelsen, the medtech analyst at Wells Fargo. And it's my pleasure to host this session with the management team from Intuitive Surgical.
With us, we have Jamie Samath, Executive Vice President, CFO, and Enterprise Technology Leader and Dan Connally, Head of Investor Relations. The format is a fireside chat. Dan is going to read the safe harbor statement first.
Dan Connally
Vice President, Head of Investor Relations
Just real quick. Comments in today's session may contain forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied as a result of certain risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties are described in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including our most recent forms 10-K and 10-Q, which you can find through our website at intuitive.com or at the SEC's website. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements.
Lawrence Biegelsen
Wells Fargo
Thanks, Dan. And thank you for being here.
So, Jamie, I wanted to start with procedures, with the focus on the U.S., and we've seen U.S. procedure growth slow recently, and your comment about law of large numbers, I think, concerns some investors to be candid. So, my question is: what framework would you use to help people estimate U.S. procedure growth going forward?
Jamie Samath
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, & Enterprise Technology Leader
Yes, I appreciate the question, and I know there's a lot of focus on the U.S. business right now. Let me zoom out for a second. So, I'd say our focus first is on global procedure growth and on all procedure types, so including Ion. And that's how we think about how we do capital allocation, how we incentivize our sales force. And we have significant opportunities to drive global.
U.S., about 60% of our business, and it has decelerated as you've described. We said on the Q2 earnings call that there was a modest impact from lower ACA subsidies. But the way we think about the U.S. business is procedure by procedure. And we draw adoption curves for each of them. And so, if I think about that business, you have prostate in the fourth quartile of adoption. You have cholecystectomy, the largest procedure category in the U.S. in the second quartile. You have appendectomy in the first quartile.
And so, we model each procedure on an adoption curve. And it also then ties to how we focus and how we invest, where they are relative to the size of the market. And the total U.S. procedure growth, then, is a summation of each of those procedures and where they are. We think that we have a significant opportunity in the U.S., particularly in benign general surgery. We have a couple of procedures though early and have just been put on the beginning points of adoption in cardiac and nipple-sparing mastectomy. And, over time, we think we have the opportunity to add procedures to the beginning of the funnel.
And so, the way that we think about the market is a significant and attractive opportunity for us. And we think that we continue to bring procedures to the beginning of that funnel. Of course, there are some dynamics in the marketplace with ACA right now, as I described.
Mark Zuckerberg
Chief Executive Officer
All right. Hey, welcome to Connect. What a wild time to be building. Delivering personal super intelligence is now within reach. Soon everyone is going to have an extremely capable personal agent that understands your goals and can work 24/7 on your behalf to help you achieve them, whether that's helping you improve your relationships, helping you be more present with your friends and family, saving you time, saving you money, helping you create things, helping advance your career. The technology now exists to make this all possible.
So what does it look like when all of this works? When every person can do more of what we dream and spend more time with the people and on the things that really matter. It's the simple idea that when you empower people, our lives get better, yet this idea has become surprisingly controversial. I am more and more convinced that the reason why Meta exists, why we succeed, and why more people use our services than any others in the world, is because we actually believe in people. Building is an act of love. It's how we impart what we believe. We pour our hearts and our souls into what we make. We struggle over the big details and the small ones. It's not always easy. Sometimes whole years are hard. But we build because this is who we are.l super intelligence is now within reach. Soon everyone is going to have an extremely capable personal agent that understands your goals and can work 24/7 on your behalf to help you achieve them, whether that's helping you improve your relationships, helping you be more present with your friends and family, saving you time, saving you money, helping you create things, helping advance your career. The technology now exists to make this all possible.
And the centerpiece of our vision for what we're building is Muse. This is the personal agent that we shipped a few weeks ago that is already helping millions of people with all kinds of different things, and in the coming years I expect that Muse is going to grow into the personal superintelligence that billions of people around the world are going to use to accomplish their goals and improve their lives.
Now I am really proud of the work that Nat and the whole team who worked on this did. Nat is an absolute legend for those of you who haven't gotten the chance to work with him, and the team that's worked on this is one of the most talented that I have ever seen. So congratulations, and off to a great start.
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