00:07 Speaker A
Time now to dig into the stocks trending this morning. We’re talking chips, big tech, AI shopping agents, and car makers.
00:20 Speaker A
Well, let’s kick off with AMD. The stock is falling sharply in the pre-market. Last night, Advanced Micro Devices, one of the main rivals to Nvidia’s chip dominance reported a standout quarter by certain metrics, revenue up 36% year on year at about 9.2 billion dollars, led by its data center AI chip business.
00:41 Speaker A
And yet the stock is drifting lower in pre-market trade down almost 5% there. Why? Well, AMD’s outlook failed to impress even at roughly $9.6 billion dollars of revenue expected for this quarter. The thing is with sky high valuations after a month-long rally, good, well, it’s not good enough to reassure many investors who now suddenly think that the AI boom will not live up to expectations.
01:03 Speaker A
On to Google parent Alphabet, which is getting some good news. Alphabet and the cybersecurity company Wiz cleared a key hurdle to close their $32 billion dollar deal with the US government, saying it would wrap up its investigation of the acquisition. It’s not time to celebrate just yet for Google and Wiz. The deal is still under scrutiny by other anti-trust regulators.
01:21 Speaker A
Turning to Amazon now, we have a very different kind of headline. This one is about AI shopping agents. There’s a clash between Amazon and Perplexity over its Comet AI browser agent, which Amazon accuses of accessing private Amazon accounts and making purchases on users’ behalf via its platform. Perplexity responds that Amazon is, quote, bullying a smaller startup because it wants people to only use its own AI shopping agents.
01:54 Speaker A
We aren’t seeing massive moves in Amazon shares this morning, as you can see, but this story may have major ramifications going forward.
02:07 Speaker A
as agentic AI in e-commerce is set to be a major area of competition, raising all sorts of questions from business strategies to antitrust regulations.
02:20 Speaker A
And now the automotive sector, which is loaded with interesting developments today. On one hand, you have Rivian, the EV maker bucking the trend after reporting a narrower than expected loss and offering upgraded production guidance. It’s ticking higher in pre-market up over 4% there.
02:40 Speaker A
On the other hand, legacy automakers are flagging because of headwinds. BMW has cut its margin outlook, citing weak China demand and its delays in tariff refunds between the US and EU.
02:53 Speaker A
The stock is still in the green today though.
02:56 Speaker A
Toyota Motors though has warned of a roughly nine and a half billion dollar tariff hit for the year, linked to US import levies. A dramatic number even for the world’s largest automaker.
03:07 Speaker A
Not to mention Nissan’s supply chain troubles. Nissan had to slow down production of its best-selling SUV because of a lack of chips. Chipmaker Nexperia is a geopolitical crossfire between the Netherlands and China, and that’s affecting automakers that need those semiconductors.
