Choice Hotels ( CHH ) declares $0.2875/share quarterly dividend , in line with previous. Forward yield 1.06% Payable April 15; for shareholders of record April 1; ex-div April 1. See CHH Dividend Scorecard, Yield Chart, & Dividend Growth. More on Choice Hotels Choice Hotels: Turning 'Neutral' On In-Line Results, Tepid Outlook (Downgrade) Choice Hotels International, Inc. (CHH) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript Choice Hotels outlines positive U.S. net rooms growth for 2026 amid portfolio optimization and conversion momentum Choice Hotels Non-GAAP EPS of $1.60 beats by $0.06, revenue of $390.15M beats by $20.51M Seeking Alpha’s Quant Rating on Choice Hotels

Construction of new data centers in the US fell for the first time since 2020 despite soaring demand for artificial intelligence computing capacity, as developers face delays in permitting, zoning and power procurement. Capacity under construction fell to 5.99 gigawatts at the end of 2025 from 6.35 gigawatts at the end of 2024, real estate brokerage CBRE Group Inc. reported Wednesday. The construction delays and faster long-distance networks are driving development to move outside traditional data center sites like Northern Virginia, Gordon Dolven , CBRE’s data center research director, said in the report. The overall vacancy rate in primary markets fell to a record low 1.4% at year-end. “Combined with growing interest in markets that offer available land and power, this is spurring investment beyond traditional hubs and reshaping the North American data center market,” Dolven said. Local pushback against massive AI data center projects has intensified in recent months, with the tide turning from welcoming the economic benefits of major construction projects to scrutinizing their resource-intensiveness. Last week, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker sought to temporarily halt incentives for data centers in a bid to contain soaring power costs. An Oracle Corp. site in New Mexico that scored a package of tax incentives and support from government-backed bonds has prompted protests largely focused on its potential environmental impact. And tensions have flared in Northern Virginia, where some residents are now looking to flee what’s become one of the largest data center hubs in the world. AI demand is forecast to require more than $3 trillion in data center investment, including related power supplies, according to estimates from Morgan Stanley and Moody’s Ratings. New tenants absorbed a record 2.5 million gigawatts in 2025, up 38% from a year earlier, CBRE said. Construction underway fell 29% in Northern Virginia, followed by a 15% drop in Hillsboro, Oregon, and a 14% decli...

Chesapeake Utilities ( CPK ) declares $0.685/share quarterly dividend , in line with previous. Forward yield 2.05% Payable April 6; for shareholders of record March 16; ex-div March 16. See CPK Dividend Scorecard, Yield Chart, & Dividend Growth. More on Chesapeake Utilities Recent Price Drop Brings Chesapeake Utilities Down To A More Attractive Valuation Mid-Cap Sell Streaks: 10 stocks trapped longest in bearish Quant ratings Seeking Alpha’s Quant Rating on Chesapeake Utilities Historical earnings data for Chesapeake Utilities Dividend scorecard for Chesapeake Utilities

Strong demand for US corporate bonds has created the most competitive conditions on record across primary markets, and is spurring more trading in the secondary market too, according to Barclays Plc . US high-grade and junk bond markets are more competitive than at any time since 2017, according to Barclays’ Competition Index, which is the bank’s own version of the popular Hirschman-Herfindahl Index that measures market concentration and competition. In the high-grade market, competition was 15% higher in the first half of 2025 than it was in 2017, and about 30% higher for junk bonds, Barclays strategists wrote on Wednesday. Competition for high-grade bonds bigger than $1 billion in size rose by about 30% between 2017 and 2025, and by 26% for high-yield offerings over $750 million during the same period. For its analysis, Barclays looked at more than 10,000 high-grade and high-yield bond issues between January 2017 and June 2025, as well as over 1 million individual allocations to initial investors reported to TRACE. The bank attributes the robust investor appetite to the proliferation of funds competing for newly issued bonds, as well as growing demand from foreign investors and lower liquidity premiums in the secondary market. Funds that trade in the primary market, including exchange-traded funds and index funds, have broadened participation in particular as they distribute demand across multiple vehicles, the strategists noted. More demand from US life insurers has also added to the competition. Meanwhile, foreigners’ long-term corporate holdings have grown about 10% year-over-year since 2024 — the first such back-to-back years of growth since the Global Financial Crisis, Barclays points out. Investors who missed out on new bonds in the primary market are also fueling more trading in the secondary market. Turnover in the first 10 days for high-grade bonds over $1 billion in size rose to 26% in 2025, a 73% increase from 2017, according to Barclays. The bank says ...

kynny/iStock via Getty Images Durable Goods Orders were revised higher, with orders for Machinery and Motor Vehicle series in decided uptrends. These data series no longer have multiple years of revisions. Commercial Aircraft continue to dominate the volatility as usual, but clear uptrends in manufacturing Machinery and Motor Vehicles/Parts continue and are in line with the implied impact of tariffs, capacity uptrend and construction employment. Investors should continue to focus on industrials, which had a positive market psychology turn last few weeks as the PMI popped above 50. The trends in this data have been with us for most of the post-COVID period. That it has taken this long for institutional investors to awake to the conclusion that we are in an economic expansion is recent. Original Post Editor's Note: The summary bullets for this article were chosen by Seeking Alpha editors.

Key PointsAs a group, mid-cap stocks boast a stronger long-term track record of returns than their large-cap counterparts.

In this article SMSD-GB AAPL GOOGL Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNT Headquarters of Samsung in Mountain View, California, on October 28, 2018. Smith Collection/gado | Archive Photos | Getty Images Samsung on Wednesday unveiled the Galaxy S26 series, its latest flagship smartphone lineup that puts Alphabet 's Gemini artificial intelligence front and center. It gives the search giant's AI technology a major mobile foothold just before it's expected to power a revamped Siri on Apple 's iPhones . The S26 is notable for the sheer number of AI systems packed into a single device. Samsung is melding together three separate AI engines: Google's Gemini for agentic tasks like booking rides and acting across apps, Perplexity for web-based queries, and an upgraded version of Samsung's own Bixby as the on-device assistant powered by a more capable in-house large language model. It's a multi-agent approach that reflects just how central the AI arms race has become to selling smartphones — and how aggressively Samsung is hedging its bets across providers rather than relying on any single one. Still, the deepest of those partnerships is with Google. Samsung was the first phone maker to ship Gemini when it launched the Galaxy S24 in January 2024 . It deepened the integration with the S25 a year later, making Gemini accessible with a long-press of the side button . Now with the S26, Gemini can do something it couldn't before: Take autonomous action inside third-party apps, not just Samsung's own. The relationship hasn't always been smooth as Samsung spent years pushing its own Tizen operating system and Bixby assistant in an effort to carve out independence from Google's ecosystem. But in the AI era, the two companies have locked arms more tightly than ever, even as Samsung simultaneously courts Perplexity to diversify its options. The result is that Samsung has become the single most important distribution channel for Google's consumer AI — and one that Apple, despite...

michaelbwatkins/iStock via Getty Images Lawmakers from both parties are urging the Navy to move ahead with long delayed contracts for at least 15 submarines, warning that further holdups could damage the highly specialized industrial base that builds the vessels, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Congress previously approved up to 13 Virginia class attack submarines and five Columbia class ballistic missile submarines, but contracts for much of that work have yet to be signed. The package, potentially worth about $100 billion, would go to General Dynamics’ ( GD ) Electric Boat and HII’s ( HII ) Newport News Shipbuilding, the two companies that construct all Navy submarines. Rep. Rob Wittman, a Virginia Republican and vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said awarding the contracts would help stabilize suppliers, many of which produce unique components with no backup source. Rep. Joe Courtney, a Connecticut Democrat whose district includes Electric Boat, said the delay creates uncertainty for shipbuilders and smaller vendors trying to hire and invest. A Navy spokesman said increasing submarine production remains a priority but did not provide a timeline for contract awards. The Virginia class, which costs roughly $5 billion per boat, is designed for conventional strike missions. The newer Columbia class, estimated at about $9.3 billion each, will carry nuclear armed ballistic missiles and replace the aging Ohio class fleet. Industry executives have said they are still waiting for clarity. General Dynamics ( GD ) Chief Executive Phebe Novakovic recently told analysts the timing is “simply up to the government,” while HII ( HII ) Chief Executive Chris Kastner said the contracts should be finalized by midyear to avoid program risk. The Navy is aiming to ramp up production to one Columbia class and two Virginia class submarines annually by 2028 as it modernizes its undersea fleet. More on General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls Huntington Ingalls I...

Retailer said ‘fundamental shift in economic conditions’ made it difficult for financial partner Aberdeen to raise funds The John Lewis Partnership is pulling out of a £500m deal to build almost 1,000 residential rental homes for rent in Bromley, Reading and West Ealing amid a “cautious property market”. The retailer, which owns Waitrose supermarkets and John Lewis department stores, blamed a “fundamental shift in the economic conditions”, which it said had made it difficult for its financial partner, Aberdeen, to raise funds for the venture, first launched in 2020. Continue reading...

JHVEPhoto Warner Bros. Discovery ( WBD ) will report its results for the fourth quarter on Thursday, before market opens. Wall Street expects the company to post earnings per share of $0.04, on a revenue of $9.33 billion, representing a year-over-year decline of about 7%. Over the quarter, Warner Bros. moved through a sequence of takeover approaches that developed into a competitive bidding process. In October, the company was reported to have rejected an early takeover approach from Paramount while continuing to explore strategic options amid rising deal interest. As the quarter progressed, bidders prepared proposals, and discussions around a potential sale or separation gathered pace. November then saw the company receive first-round offers from Paramount, Comcast, and Netflix, with parties asked to submit improved bids. Reports indicated Netflix had put forward a leading offer for key assets, prompting Paramount to revise and sweeten its proposal, while competing bids and shareholder reactions continued through mid- to late December as the board weighed rival approaches and the process moved toward the new year. According to Alpha’s Quant Rating system, WBD is rated Hold with an overall score of 3.46 out of 5, reflecting grades of A+ in terms of profitability and momentum, but a D- in growth. Over the past three months, EPS estimates have seen one upward revision and no downward revisions, while revenue estimates have seen no upward revisions and five downward revisions. An analyst said Warner Bros. faces pivotal outcomes tied to its merger process involving Paramount and Netflix, noting, “the most likely outcome is still that either Paramount or Netflix closes this deal,” and adding, “the real stories with Warner now are the merger, the spinoff, streaming, and the movie slate.” More on Warner Bros. Discovery Warner Bros. Discovery: The New Offer Is Unlikely To Be The Last Warner Bros. Discovery Merger: How To Play The Three Scenarios Netflix And Warner Bros. Dis...

格隆汇2月26日｜美国5年期国债收益率在国债拍卖后继续走高，最新报3.617%，日内上行2.1个基点。

格隆汇2月26日｜谷歌：谷歌Pixel设备上的电话诈骗检测功能现已在美国、澳大利亚、加拿大、印度、爱尔兰和英国上线。

Samsung unveils Galaxy S26; lifts prices in key markets amid chip price surge Reuters

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Samsung Electronics on Thursday launched its flagship Galaxy S26 smartphones with higher prices for some models in the ‌United States and South Korea, testing demand as soaring memory chip costs ‌pressure margins. The rollout, which integrates Perplexity's AI features along with Google's Gemini and an upgraded ​Bixby, follows Samsung's loss of smartphone leadership last year to Apple, which benefited from strong iPhone demand in China and India. A global push by firms such as Meta, Google and Microsoft to build AI infrastructure has absorbed much ⁠of memory supply, lifting prices as chipmakers prioritise higher-margin data centre components such as high-bandwidth memory chips over consumer devices.

格隆汇2月26日｜三星高管：预计智能手机将成为消费者接入人工智能的主要途径。

格隆汇2月26日｜据福克斯新闻，科技公司高管将于3月前往白宫会见特朗普，并承诺为新的数据中心自建电力供应，以避免纳税人承担额外能源成本。白宫发言人泰勒·罗杰斯周三表示，“主要科技公司将于下周在白宫与特朗普总统会面，正式签署他在国情咨文演讲中宣布的‘电价保护承诺’。根据这一倡议，这些大型企业将为新的人工智能数据中心自行建设、引入或购买电力供应，确保在需求增长之际，美国民众的电费不会上升。”参与3月4日活动的公司包括亚马逊、谷歌、Meta、微软、xAI、甲骨文和OpenAI。特朗普、美国能源部长赖特以及总统助理兼白宫科技政策办公室主任迈克尔·克拉齐奥斯正在牵头推进此事。

美国总统特朗普的新关税计划将使约42亿欧元(50亿美元)的欧盟出口商品面临的关税高于美欧贸易协议所设的15%上限。 彭博援引了解欧盟税率评估的知情人士报道称，特朗普的新政策将把奶酪、黄油、部分农产品，以及若干塑料制品、纺织品和化学品在内的欧洲出口商品关税升至高于协议允许的最高水平。 在美上市ETF欧元做多涨0.3%，欧元区ETF涨1%，欧元兑美元涨0.3%。

Samsung's S26 line of smartphones gets a large dose of AI.

Samsung's S26 line of smartphones gets a large dose of AI.

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