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ASML faces bigger problems than China

16 Sep 2024

Fears of US tech export curbs have pummelled the $320 bln Dutch firm’s shares. A longer-term worry is that the growth of AI leads to new technologies, and less need for ASML’s machines that make chips smaller and efficient. That, more than trade wars, may hurt its rich valuation.

Ireland can use unwanted taxes to keep Apple sweet

10 Sep 2024

Europe’s top court told the iPhone maker to pay $14 bln in corporate levies. Dublin opposed the move for fear of driving away Big Tech. But PM Simon Harris can up the country’s allure by spending the funds on infrastructure, and IT giants have limited choices for EU headquarters.

Nvidia has nothing to fear but a lack of fear

4 Sep 2024

A sell-off in the $2.6 trln chipmaker’s shares, the third this year, has little basis in industrial reality. Customers still plan to spend billions on its chips. Fickle markets and antitrust probes are risks, but a bigger one is complacency – as modeled by forebearer Intel.

Telegram’s route to profitability looks dubious

3 Sep 2024

The troubled app’s CEO Pavel Durov runs a lossmaking enterprise. The easiest path to profitability is to echo Facebook, but content moderation costs would further hit Telegram’s finances. The main alternative is to be a messaging app, but WhatsApp implies that’s hard to monetise.

Tech’s also-rans are ripe for the plucking

30 Aug 2024

Buyout barons are back to spending their $2.6 trln of dry powder, scooping up software companies like PowerSchool and Squarespace. With regulators restraining Big Tech and public market investors increasingly discerning, beleaguered sellers might be ready to take the money.

Nvidia drives path Tesla would find familiar

29 Aug 2024

Like Elon Musk’s carmaker at its peak, the $3 trln chip giant has a huge lead in a transforming industry, dented only by production glitches. Unlike Tesla, Nvidia’s valuation by some measures looks fairly sane. The bigger it gets, the higher the stakes of even small hiccups.

OpenAI’s mooted $100 bln value is relatively sober

29 Aug 2024

The ChatGPT maker may be worth just 16% more in its next share sale than in February’s funding round, according to reports. That looks modest, given AI darling Nvidia’s shares have nearly doubled. Senior departures and competition from rivals like Elon Musk justify a modest bump.

Carry trade chaos charts outlines of next selloff

28 Aug 2024

BIS researchers reckon cascading margin calls helped turn a local Japanese wobble into a global rout in early August, eventually wiping $1 trln off US tech stocks. It’s a similar story to a March 2020 slump and 2022’s UK bond collapse. Worse, the core drivers remain in place.

New EU antitrust tsar has better tools, harder job

27 Aug 2024

The European Union will soon have a new competition commissioner. Margrethe Vestager’s replacement has greater scope to go after Big Tech and Chinese subsidies. But he or she will also have to defend the single market from the assault of EU members’ national industrial policies.

Intel will be forced to find a plan B

26 Aug 2024

The US chipmaker staked everything on erasing rival TSMC’s technological lead. But the Taiwanese firm will invest $30 bln this year to stay ahead. That’s 15% more than Intel, and as its business shrinks, the gap will grow. Boss Pat Gelsinger is fighting a losing battle.

Elon Musk’s best move in EU fight may be an eXit

21 Aug 2024

The billionaire has different views on content moderation from the European Commission, which is investigating his social-media site. It’s hard to imagine a compromise. Rather than risking fines of 6% of sales, it might be easier for X to simply block users in the region.

AMD’s $5 bln deal solidifies AI runner-up status

19 Aug 2024

The $250 bln chipmaker’s data center business will double revenue this year due to demand for artificial intelligence. Buying server maker ZT Systems should help tame rising complexity, allowing speedier deployment of AMD’s chips. Even so, it’s miles behind $3 trln leader Nvidia.

Google solution is distribution, tech and time

19 Aug 2024

How do you fix a $2 trln illegal search monopoly? Counterintuitively, big moves like separating Google’s ad platform might just treat the symptom. Nixing contracts bolstering its lead in users and data gets at the illness. The key is to give new tech room to shift the market.

Tech stocks await AI’s real reckoning

7 Aug 2024

Some $3 trln has been wiped off US technology firms’ value, hammering artificial intelligence champions like Alphabet and Nvidia. It may be more a case of feelings and flows than shifting assumptions about the value of silicon smarts. If that changes, the true pain begins.

Intel’s cuts will worsen its competitive tailspin

1 Aug 2024

The $120 billion chipmaker plans to stop its investor payout, slash investment and cut 15% of staff in the hope of shoring up its feeble cash flows. Boss Pat Gelsinger had little choice, but these tough measures will make it even harder to catch chief rival TSMC.

Microsoft gives peek into tech-stock takedown

31 Jul 2024

The software giant’s earnings weren’t bad – although its cloud business slowed slightly. But as interest rate expectations shift downwards, investors are looking for reasons to exit highly-valued stocks - especially big tech firms. Even a minor miss becomes a reason to sell.

Meta AI strategy: give something to get something

25 Jul 2024

As tech firms invest hand over fist in artificial intelligence, the Facebook owner’s plan to let developers tweak and freely use its models sounds like a giveaway. CEO Mark Zuckerberg hopes Meta will be long-term richer for it. Google’s Android success suggests he might be right.

UMG pays steep price for platform addiction

25 Jul 2024

The $42 bln music group’s shares sank by more than 25% on Thursday, falling below their 2021 IPO. Lower-than-expected growth in subscription revenues underlines the company’s painful dependence on pricing decisions made by big players like Amazon or Apple.

Google’s third-place cloud business is a winner

23 Jul 2024

Parent Alphabet tripled its quarterly operating income at its IT service division. It still lags in market share. Yet the $2 trln giant has an advantage learning from the mistakes of larger rival Microsoft while bigger peer Amazon illuminates the potential profit ahead.