With rising geopolitical tensions, major monetary policy shifts, slowing economic growth, an overvalued stock market, a choppy job market, and elevated inflation, these are uncertain times for investors. It has lowered investors' appetite for risk and increased their desire for safer investments, particularly dividend stocks and ETFs. Dividend ETFs generally invest in stocks of large, stable compa...
With rising geopolitical tensions, major monetary policy shifts, slowing economic growth, an overvalued stock market, a choppy job market, and elevated inflation, these are uncertain times for investors. It has lowered investors' appetite for risk and increased their desire for safer investments, particularly dividend stocks and ETFs. Dividend ETFs generally invest in stocks of large, stable companies that can be relied on to produce consistent income and solid returns through most market environments. There may be no more stable dividend ETF than the ProShares S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats ETF (NOBL 0.23%). It's all right there in the name -- it invests in large-cap stocks that have increased their dividends for at least 25 years in a row, or more. It doesn't get much more stable than that. It can certainly provide steady dividend income, but can it make you a millionaire at retirement? Built for these times The ProShares S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats ETF is the only one that invests solely in the Dividend Aristocrats® (the term Dividend Aristocrats is a registered trademark of Standard & Poor’s Financial Services LLC). As of Feb. 1, the ETF held about 69 stocks, all of which had increased their dividend for at least 25 years in a row. The average consecutive years of dividend growth were 43 years. The ETF is equal-weighted, meaning all 69 of the stocks have roughly the same weight in the portfolio. Some of the longest dividend payers include Coca-Cola at 63 years, Target at 54 years, and S&P Global at 52 years -- all Dividend Kings, or companies that have raised their dividends for 50 years or more. Expand NYSEMKT : NOBL ProShares S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats ETF Today's Change ( -0.23 %) $ -0.25 Current Price $ 109.92 Key Data Points Day's Range $ 108.96 - $ 110.04 52wk Range $ 89.76 - $ 115.31 Volume 574K This ETF is specifically designed for investors who are looking to balance out their portfolio with an all-weather, risk-averse fund that beats the market during...
Oracle plans to introduce sales and marketing tools. 2025/03/11: Entrance to Oracle's office. Oracle Corporation is a leading American multinational technology company. (Photo by May James/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) Oracle reported blowout results for its fiscal third-quarter; Shares rose 10% in Wednesday’s premarket session. CEO Mike Sicilia said Oracle is building three new applic...
Oracle plans to introduce sales and marketing tools. 2025/03/11: Entrance to Oracle's office. Oracle Corporation is a leading American multinational technology company. (Photo by May James/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) Oracle reported blowout results for its fiscal third-quarter; Shares rose 10% in Wednesday’s premarket session. CEO Mike Sicilia said Oracle is building three new applications: for sales lead generation, sales automation, and website building. For investors, CRM appears to be at a more attractive valuation and the company has lesser leverage than Oracle. Oracle appears to be gunning for Salesforce’s turf, as tech heavyweights push to lock in users to their services stack. The Austin, Texas-based IT giant, which reported a blowout quarter on Tuesday, said it is building three new applications that, it said openly, Salesforce does not have. Oracle’s Push In Sales Software “We are building brand-new SaaS products using AI and also embedding AI agents right into our existing application suites,” Oracle CEO Mike Sicilia said on the company’s earnings call. “By embracing AI with small engineering teams, we have just built three brand-new CX applications, lead generation and qualification, sales orchestration and automated selling and our new website generator… These are three products that Salesforce.com does not have.” Salesforce is generally regarded as the leader in business software for sales and marketing. Its suite of products manages sales pipelines, automates marketing, improves customer service, runs online commerce, unifies customer data, and enables team collaboration. “We've built these new CX products to help our customers sell, not simply to administer a forecast or generate e-mail opens,” Sicilia said. Oracle, known for its cloud services, is beefing up its enterprise applications business. Sicilia said the company’s AI offerings are cheaper and superior to those from rivals. Cloud applications revenue was up 11% last quarter, rea...
Key Points The Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF does a good job of providing diversified exposure to the U.S. stock market. A true total stock ETF shouldn’t ignore stocks from other countries. Even so, the ETF was important in broadening investors’ horizons. 10 stocks we like better than Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF › Many investors mistakenly believe that in order to build a diversified portfol...
Key Points The Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF does a good job of providing diversified exposure to the U.S. stock market. A true total stock ETF shouldn’t ignore stocks from other countries. Even so, the ETF was important in broadening investors’ horizons. 10 stocks we like better than Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF › Many investors mistakenly believe that in order to build a diversified portfolio using exchange-traded funds, you have to own a large number of different ETFs. It's true that with individual stocks, owning shares of at least a couple dozen different companies is useful in preventing a potentially catastrophic loss in your portfolio if something bad happens to one of your stocks. With ETFs, though, there's a level of diversification that's already built in, because the fund itself owns many different individual stocks that often move in different directions depending on market conditions. As a result, you might be able to get all the exposure that you need from a handful of ETFs. Indeed, the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (NYSEMKT: VTI) aims to take the diversifying value of ETFs a step further. Its name suggests that if you need stock exposure, you need look no further than this fund. When you look more closely, though, you'll realize that this "total market" fund actually leaves out a huge portion of the stock market. In this third and final article on Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF for the Voyager Portfolio, you'll find out why the fund's name is a bit of a misnomer and why you might consider supplementing what seems to be an all-inclusive ETF with a different type of fund. Will AI create the world's first trillionaire? Our team just released a report on the one little-known company, called an "Indispensable Monopoly" providing the critical technology Nvidia and Intel both need. Continue » What Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF includes and doesn't include Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF deserves a lot of credit for bringing the value of small and ...
Richard Drury/DigitalVision via Getty Images Introduction The Trade Desk ( TTD ) has been one of those names that has been coming up quite a lot in my screeners, considering its large drawdown and the recent announcement that a deal is on the horizon with OpenAI. As these will generally create volatility in the stock, I will assess if TTD is worth investing in for a potential turnaround. Current D...
Richard Drury/DigitalVision via Getty Images Introduction The Trade Desk ( TTD ) has been one of those names that has been coming up quite a lot in my screeners, considering its large drawdown and the recent announcement that a deal is on the horizon with OpenAI. As these will generally create volatility in the stock, I will assess if TTD is worth investing in for a potential turnaround. Current Dynamics I’ll first start with the latest earnings that came out as a double beat (which was certainly not translated into the post-earnings stock performance). Q4 Non-GAAP EPS stood at $0.59, a slight beat of 1 cent, while revenue came out at $847MM, a beat of $6.32MM. For the FY figures, TTD posted a total revenue of $2.896B, an 18% increase over 2024. It's still great in my view, though it's still a narrowing of previous rates seen. This deceleration has been one of the reasons why investors punished the stock so much. Management noted that when adjusting for the cyclical nature of political advertising, which was highly boosted during 2024, the underlying year-over-year revenue growth for the quarter was more like 19%. In essence, I’ll say that TTD has prioritized margin sustainability while slowing revenue growth for the year. EBITDA margin remained steady at 41%, despite the massive rollout of the Kokai platform and continued investments in the Ventura Ecosystem . I believe that this proves the inherent scalability of TTD’s model, where the incremental spend on the platform generates high-margin revenue. The deceleration was heavily linked to the Consumer Packaged Goods and automotive sectors, which together represent more than 25% of the total spend on the platform. The weakness is apparently linked to supply chain disruptions and a pivot toward prudent budgeting as these firms manage rising costs. Though to be fair, I have to say that the company has been utilizing its strong cash flow to aggressively support its current share price. The company used around $1.4B to ...
Guido Mieth/DigitalVision via Getty Images Thesis review Ascent Industries ( ACNT ) was one of the good calls I made last year. After my article was published, the stock rallied by double digits, ending the year at $16.12 per share (an upside of 34% since the publication). Coming into 2026, the stock continued to outperform, reaching the peak of $17.76 per share. After the release of Q4 earnings r...
Guido Mieth/DigitalVision via Getty Images Thesis review Ascent Industries ( ACNT ) was one of the good calls I made last year. After my article was published, the stock rallied by double digits, ending the year at $16.12 per share (an upside of 34% since the publication). Coming into 2026, the stock continued to outperform, reaching the peak of $17.76 per share. After the release of Q4 earnings results, the stock experienced a 14% sell-off in a single day, landing the share price at $13.26 per share (still a 10% change since the publication). After this massive drawdown, it only made sense to review my previous thesis and see whether there is any recent information that invalidates my initial conviction. article performance (Seeking Alpha) Sadly enough there is; the good news is that it has nothing to do with internal operations of the firm but the general macroenvironment. See, my initial thesis on Ascent was that the firm has fully divested its low-margin business and decided to focus 100% of its assets and resources on growing the chemicals segment, the part of the business with high margins and recurring revenue. To be honest, I expected the margin gains to be immediate and consistently high, and it looks like most investors had the same expectations, which explains why the stock ended the year outperforming its peers and the broader market. YoY, Ascent returned 14.21%, slightly underperforming the ( SPY ), which returned 18.12%, due to the sell-off after earnings. However, its peers ( SCL ), ( IOSP ), and ( NTIC ) had a bad performance, losing 15.81%, 26.77%, and 24.97% of their value in the same period, respectively. YoY perfomance (YCharts) What shocked me and the broader investor base was Q4 gross margin contraction on a QoQ and YoY basis, which wasn't expected because the bullish case was that, now that Ascent is a pure-play specialty chemicals business, we'll only see high, less volatile, and consistent margin expansion going forward (this is the promise ...
JazzIRT/E+ via Getty Images Activist investor Ortelius Advisors wants Surgery Partners ( SGRY ) to sell its surgical hospitals and refresh its board. Ortelius is calling for Surgery Partners ( SGRY ) to sell all of its surgical hospitals, repurchase shares, reduce debt, refresh its board, install a new management team, and review strategic alternatives, according to a letter Ortelius wrote to shar...
JazzIRT/E+ via Getty Images Activist investor Ortelius Advisors wants Surgery Partners ( SGRY ) to sell its surgical hospitals and refresh its board. Ortelius is calling for Surgery Partners ( SGRY ) to sell all of its surgical hospitals, repurchase shares, reduce debt, refresh its board, install a new management team, and review strategic alternatives, according to a letter Ortelius wrote to shareholders on Tuesday. "A divestiture of all of the surgical hospitals should generate billions of dollars in asset sales, and afford the wherewithal to buy back stock, pay down debt, and improve credit worthiness," Peter DeSorcy, managing member of Ortelius, wrote in the letter. "The remaining entity, a pure-play ambulatory surgery centers business, would exhibit stronger revenue growth, higher EBITDA margins, and larger free cash flow yields, and warrant a much expanded EV/EBITDA multiple." Surgery Partners ( SGRY ) didn't immediately respond to a Seeking Alpha email request for comment. Surgery Partners ( SGRY ) is set to present at the Barclays 28 th Annual Global Healthcare Conference on Tuesday. More on Surgery Partners Surgery Partners' Plunge Offers An Opportunity For Upside (Rating Upgrade) Surgery Partners, Inc. (SGRY) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript Surgery Partners, Inc. 2025 Q4 - Results - Earnings Call Presentation Surgery Partners outlines $3.35B–$3.45B revenue target for 2026 while advancing portfolio optimization Surgery Partners subsidiary prices $425M add-on notes
Artificial intelligence names have become some of the most widely embraced stocks among professional investors, with several AI-linked companies seeing the biggest jump in ownership by active U.S. equity mutual funds in the past year, Bank of America found. The bank's latest analysis of portfolio holdings found that technology firms tied to the AI boom dominated the list of S & P 500 names with th...
Artificial intelligence names have become some of the most widely embraced stocks among professional investors, with several AI-linked companies seeing the biggest jump in ownership by active U.S. equity mutual funds in the past year, Bank of America found. The bank's latest analysis of portfolio holdings found that technology firms tied to the AI boom dominated the list of S & P 500 names with the largest increase in "ownership breadth," or the share of funds holding a stock. Bank of America said the data is based on a monthly analysis of the holdings of actively managed U.S. large-cap equity mutual funds. The firm aggregates those positions into a bottom-up composite to gauge how professional portfolio managers are positioned in U.S. equities. Defense tech play Palantir Technologies led the ranking, with ownership among active large-cap mutual funds climbing to 32% from just 7% a year ago. Other AI-exposed companies also saw a sharp rise in popularity among professional investors. Broadcom and GE Vernova both registered roughly 16-percentage-point increases in fund ownership, while Amphenol , a maker of fiber optic connectors, and software stock AppLovin each climbed by about 12 percentage points. Networking and infrastructure players such as Arista Networks and Western Digital also made the list, reflecting strong investor demand for companies tied to the build-out of data centers and AI computing. The list also included large technology platforms such as Meta Platforms and Netflix , which saw ownership breadth rise as fund managers increasingly view AI as a key driver of future growth in areas such as advertising, content recommendation and productivity tools. — CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed reporting.
Applied Optoelectronics AAOI has already delivered the kind of move that forces investors to raise their standards. The stock is up 241.4% in the past three months and 722.8% over the past year, which means the market is pricing in a clean execution ramp, not just a cyclical rebound. That backdrop makes the decision less about finding upside potential and more about stress-testing what has to go r...
Applied Optoelectronics AAOI has already delivered the kind of move that forces investors to raise their standards. The stock is up 241.4% in the past three months and 722.8% over the past year, which means the market is pricing in a clean execution ramp, not just a cyclical rebound. That backdrop makes the decision less about finding upside potential and more about stress-testing what has to go right. Hence, the checklist comes down to timing, mix and customer order flow. AAOI Stock’s Performance Image Source: Zacks Investment Research AAOI to Benefit From Scale-Driven Profitability Applied Optoelectronics’ business narrative has shifted toward scale-driven profitability. Management still guides to a non-GAAP net loss in the first quarter of 2026, with sustainable non-GAAP profitability expected to begin in the second quarter of 2026. That timeline matters because AAOI’s 2026 goals are ambitious. This Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company targets more than $1 billion in revenues and over $120 million in non-GAAP operating profit for 2026, implying that the second-half cadence and operating leverage have to show up on schedule. A key near-term gate is operational, not demand-related. AAOI has repeatedly framed 2026 revenues as constrained by capacity and customer qualification milestones, with firmware interoperability work also cited as a governor on volume as the ramp progresses. Applied Optoelectronics Revenue Mix Shows Two Engines AAOI’s 2025 revenue mix highlights why investors are watching two end markets at once. Cable television contributed 53.8% of 2025 revenue, data center represented 42.9%, telecom was 3.0%, and fiber-to-the-home and other were 0.3%. The split matters now because the company is trying to lift margins while shifting the growth engine toward higher-speed data center transceivers. AAOI expects an 800 gigabits per second ramp to become the main data center driver as qualifications and capacity come online, while cable television demand tied to DOCSIS ...
Polymarket Calls In Palantir to Be the Adult in the Room - Moby BREAKING NEWS Prediction market Polymarket announced Tuesday it's partnering with Palantir Technologies and TWG AI to monitor its sports contracts for suspicious activity, which is either a sign the industry is maturing or proof that irony is the only commodity still trading at a premium. Palantir, a Peter Thiel thought experiment com...
Polymarket Calls In Palantir to Be the Adult in the Room - Moby BREAKING NEWS Prediction market Polymarket announced Tuesday it's partnering with Palantir Technologies and TWG AI to monitor its sports contracts for suspicious activity, which is either a sign the industry is maturing or proof that irony is the only commodity still trading at a premium. Palantir, a Peter Thiel thought experiment come to life, is a company whose entire brand is knowing things it probably shouldn't. And now it’s your prediction market's hall monitor. The optics are, charitably, a vibe. The move comes as Polymarket and rival Kalshi have watched trading volumes explode, fueled largely by sports contracts and, until recently, some rather geopolitically fraught bets. Both platforms took heat over contracts tied to Iran, and after Ayatollah Khamenei was killed, Kalshi moved to refund users' net losses. Nothing clears the credibility bar quite like your market resolving an assassination. Polymarket, meanwhile, had been relatively tight-lipped about how it handles insider trading, which made this announcement feel less like a press release and more like a reluctant hand raise. Our analysts just identified a stock with the potential to be the next Nvidia. Tell us how you invest and we'll show you why it's our #1 pick. Tap here. Kalshi had already been more proactive, bringing two insider trading cases to the CFTC and announcing a committee that will publish quarterly stats on flagged trades and government referrals. That's the kind of institutional performance that says, "We are trying to be regulated, please notice." The Palantir partnership will screen participants against existing sports betting ban lists, which is genuinely useful if your problem is a disgraced MLB player. Whether it covers the geopolitical edge cases that made these platforms famous, however, is a different question nobody's answered yet. One stock. Nvidia-level potential. 30M+ investors trust Moby to find it first. Get th...
⚽ Champions League news from the 5.45pm GMT kick-off ⚽ Live scores | Read today’s Football Daily | Email Scott Since winning the Champions League in 2019, Liverpool’s performance in the knockout stage of the competition has been, by their own lofty standards, little short of abysmal. Home and away R16 defeats to Atletico Madrid in 2020. A meek quarter-final surrender to Real Madrid in 2021. Home a...
⚽ Champions League news from the 5.45pm GMT kick-off ⚽ Live scores | Read today’s Football Daily | Email Scott Since winning the Champions League in 2019, Liverpool’s performance in the knockout stage of the competition has been, by their own lofty standards, little short of abysmal. Home and away R16 defeats to Atletico Madrid in 2020. A meek quarter-final surrender to Real Madrid in 2021. Home and away R16 defeats to Real Madrid in 2023. Last year’s flattering R16 win in Paris followed by defeat at home. To give fair measure, they did reach the final in 2022, and while that’s a fairly whopping great caveat, the overall point surely stands. Given their historical status as European royalty, the Redmen need to raise their game. Which, to be fair, they’ve been doing in Europe this season. Their travails in the Premier League are well documented, but they won six out of eight games in the group stage, that 4-1thrashing by PSV Eindhoven a really weird outlier. Their only other defeat was the result of an unfortunate and extremely soft penalty decision … the only problem being, it was at Galatasaray, which is the fixture they again head into tonight. And Gala are not a club Liverpool like playing: the Reds have won just one of five previous games against the Turks in the Champions League, and have never beaten them away. Throw in Gala’s exceptional home record in European Cup knockouts – they’re unbeaten in ten since losing to Atletico Madrid in 1973, for goodness sake – and Liverpool have quite a lot of historical baggage to shake off if they’re to head back to Anfield with any sort of advantage. Continue reading...
Shares of Salesforce (CRM +0.09%) are down nearly 26% so far in 2026. Investors have been concerned whether artificial intelligence (AI) can disrupt the traditional seat-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) model and slow the growth of enterprise software companies. The company's muted fiscal 2027 revenue guidance of $45.8 billion to $46.2 billion, implying 10% to 11% growth, further reinforced fear...
Shares of Salesforce (CRM +0.09%) are down nearly 26% so far in 2026. Investors have been concerned whether artificial intelligence (AI) can disrupt the traditional seat-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) model and slow the growth of enterprise software companies. The company's muted fiscal 2027 revenue guidance of $45.8 billion to $46.2 billion, implying 10% to 11% growth, further reinforced fears of a slowdown in Salesforce's growth trajectory in tandem with the enterprise software industry. However, the sell-off has ignored several important catalysts from Salesforce's recent earnings results. These include the rapid rise of its Agentforce AI platform, the strength of its recurring SaaS business, and its aggressive capital return program. The number investors should watch Salesforce has penetrated the rapidly evolving agentic AI space with Agentforce, an enterprise platform designed to build, deploy, and manage AI agents across a range of use cases, including customer service, sales development, employee support, and deep research. Agentforce is already witnessing robust enterprise adoption. In the first 15 months since launch, the company has closed more than 29,000 Agentforce deals. Agentforce's annual recurring revenue (ARR) also grew 169% year over year to $800 million by the end of fiscal 2026 (ending Jan. 31, 2026). That single number suggests Salesforce's AI strategy is already translating into real revenue and that the company is adapting to the rapidly evolving AI landscape. But there is more to Salesforce's AI strategy than Agentforce. Expand NYSE : CRM Salesforce Today's Change ( 0.09 %) $ 0.18 Current Price $ 198.97 Key Data Points Market Cap $183B Day's Range $ 190.60 - $ 199.50 52wk Range $ 174.57 - $ 296.05 Volume 586K Avg Vol 11M Gross Margin 75.28 % Dividend Yield 0.84 % Building a broader AI ecosystem Salesforce is also strengthening its AI ecosystem with Data 360, a unified data platform that consolidates enterprise data across multiple sources...
Key Points The tech giant's Agentforce platform has witnessed robust traction so far in fiscal 2026. Agentforce and Data 360 are also playing a crucial role in building a sticky customer base. Salesforce stock, however, trades at a significant discount to its historical valuation. 10 stocks we like better than Salesforce › Shares of Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) are down nearly 26% so far in 2026. Invest...
Key Points The tech giant's Agentforce platform has witnessed robust traction so far in fiscal 2026. Agentforce and Data 360 are also playing a crucial role in building a sticky customer base. Salesforce stock, however, trades at a significant discount to its historical valuation. 10 stocks we like better than Salesforce › Shares of Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) are down nearly 26% so far in 2026. Investors have been concerned whether artificial intelligence (AI) can disrupt the traditional seat-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) model and slow the growth of enterprise software companies. The company's muted fiscal 2027 revenue guidance of $45.8 billion to $46.2 billion, implying 10% to 11% growth, further reinforced fears of a slowdown in Salesforce's growth trajectory in tandem with the enterprise software industry. Will AI create the world's first trillionaire? Our team just released a report on the one little-known company, called an "Indispensable Monopoly" providing the critical technology Nvidia and Intel both need. Continue » However, the sell-off has ignored several important catalysts from Salesforce's recent earnings results. These include the rapid rise of its Agentforce AI platform, the strength of its recurring SaaS business, and its aggressive capital return program. The number investors should watch Salesforce has penetrated the rapidly evolving agentic AI space with Agentforce, an enterprise platform designed to build, deploy, and manage AI agents across a range of use cases, including customer service, sales development, employee support, and deep research. Agentforce is already witnessing robust enterprise adoption. In the first 15 months since launch, the company has closed more than 29,000 Agentforce deals. Agentforce's annual recurring revenue (ARR) also grew 169% year over year to $800 million by the end of fiscal 2026 (ending Jan. 31, 2026). That single number suggests Salesforce's AI strategy is already translating into real revenue and that the co...
Polymarket plans to develop a “sports integrity platform” designed to prevent, identify and report anomalous or suspicious activity on the company’s prediction market, according to a Tuesday (March 10) press release. By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Priva...
Polymarket plans to develop a “sports integrity platform” designed to prevent, identify and report anomalous or suspicious activity on the company’s prediction market, according to a Tuesday (March 10) press release. By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions . Complete the form to unlock this article and enjoy unlimited free access to all PYMNTS content — no additional logins required. The firm partnered with software company Palantir Technologies and enterprise artificial intelligence company TWG AI to develop the new platform, the release said. It will have as its technical infrastructure the Vergence AI engine created last year through a joint venture between Palantir and TWG AI. Vergence AI provides end-to-end trade monitoring, anomaly detection models, prohibited trader screening, operations center enablement, and compliance reporting and documentation, per the release. “Our partnership with Palantir and TWG AI allows us to apply world-class analytics and monitoring to sports markets while building tools that can help leagues and teams maintain confidence in the games themselves,” Polymarket founder and CEO Shayne Coplan said in the release. “Our goal has always been to give fans new ways to engage with the sports they love while ensuring those markets can grow responsibly on a global scale.” We’d love to be your preferred source for news. Please add us to your preferred sources list so our news, data and interviews show up in your feed. Thanks! Add as Preferred Source It was reported March 7 that Polymarket and rival prediction market Kalshi are each targeting $20 billion valuations after being valued at half that figure in late 2025. At the same time, the companies are facing legislation introduced in the U.S. House that would block them from offering markets on a range of topics, inclu...
Amazon.com AMZN delivered a strong operational finish to 2025, posting record quarterly revenues and accelerating cloud growth, yet the stock has struggled to build on that momentum. The company’s aggressive investment posture, while strategically compelling over the long term, is compressing near-term cash flows and widening the gap between its premium multiple and current earnings power. From a ...
Amazon.com AMZN delivered a strong operational finish to 2025, posting record quarterly revenues and accelerating cloud growth, yet the stock has struggled to build on that momentum. The company’s aggressive investment posture, while strategically compelling over the long term, is compressing near-term cash flows and widening the gap between its premium multiple and current earnings power. From a valuation standpoint, AMZN stock appears overvalued, trading at a forward 12-month price/earnings ratio of 26.46X, higher than the industry’s 21.77X. Amazon has a Value Score of C. For investors weighing their options, the evidence tilts toward holding existing positions rather than adding aggressively — or waiting for a more favorable entry point to emerge in 2026. AMZN’s Valuation Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Strong Q4 2025 Results, But Market Reacts Cautiously Amazon’s fourth-quarter 2025 results demonstrated the depth of its growth engine. Net sales rose 14% year over year to a record $213.4 billion, comfortably beating the consensus estimate. Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) was the standout performer, growing 24% year over year to $35.6 billion — its fastest pace in 13 quarters — fueled by enterprises accelerating their shift to cloud and AI workloads. Operating income rose to $25 billion from $21.2 billion in the year-ago period. However, diluted earnings per share came in at $1.95, a modest miss versus expectations, and free cash flow contracted sharply to $11.2 billion from $38.2 billion, weighed down by a year of record capital investment. A $200B CapEx Commitment Raises Near-Term Caution The most consequential detail from Amazon’s fourth-quarter report was its 2026 capital expenditure guidance of approximately $200 billion — a roughly 53% increase from the $131.8 billion deployed in 2025 — with the bulk directed toward AWS AI infrastructure. For first-quarter 2026, the company guided net sales of $173.5 billion to $178.5 billion, representing 11% to 15% yea...
Amazon.com AMZN delivered a strong operational finish to 2025, posting record quarterly revenues and accelerating cloud growth, yet the stock has struggled to build on that momentum. The company’s aggressive investment posture, while strategically compelling over the long term, is compressing near-term cash flows and widening the gap between its premium multiple and current earnings power. From a ...
Amazon.com AMZN delivered a strong operational finish to 2025, posting record quarterly revenues and accelerating cloud growth, yet the stock has struggled to build on that momentum. The company’s aggressive investment posture, while strategically compelling over the long term, is compressing near-term cash flows and widening the gap between its premium multiple and current earnings power. From a valuation standpoint, AMZN stock appears overvalued, trading at a forward 12-month price/earnings ratio of 26.46X, higher than the industry’s 21.77X. Amazon has a Value Score of C. For investors weighing their options, the evidence tilts toward holding existing positions rather than adding aggressively — or waiting for a more favorable entry point to emerge in 2026. AMZN’s Valuation Zacks Investment Research Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Strong Q4 2025 Results, But Market Reacts Cautiously Amazon’s fourth-quarter 2025 results demonstrated the depth of its growth engine. Net sales rose 14% year over year to a record $213.4 billion, comfortably beating the consensus estimate. Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) was the standout performer, growing 24% year over year to $35.6 billion — its fastest pace in 13 quarters — fueled by enterprises accelerating their shift to cloud and AI workloads. Operating income rose to $25 billion from $21.2 billion in the year-ago period. However, diluted earnings per share came in at $1.95, a modest miss versus expectations, and free cash flow contracted sharply to $11.2 billion from $38.2 billion, weighed down by a year of record capital investment. A $200B CapEx Commitment Raises Near-Term Caution The most consequential detail from Amazon’s fourth-quarter report was its 2026 capital expenditure guidance of approximately $200 billion — a roughly 53% increase from the $131.8 billion deployed in 2025 — with the bulk directed toward AWS AI infrastructure. For first-quarter 2026, the company guided net sales of $173.5 billion to $178.5 billion, r...
Great Britain won their first medal of the Winter Paralympics on Tuesday as Neil Simpson imposed himself on a stacked field to claim silver in the men’s visually impaired alpine combined. Finishing second behind the home favourite Giacomo Bertagnolli, but ahead of Austria’s Johannes Aigner, who has won two gold medals at these Games, Simpson found the form the British team had been hoping for as h...
Great Britain won their first medal of the Winter Paralympics on Tuesday as Neil Simpson imposed himself on a stacked field to claim silver in the men’s visually impaired alpine combined. Finishing second behind the home favourite Giacomo Bertagnolli, but ahead of Austria’s Johannes Aigner, who has won two gold medals at these Games, Simpson found the form the British team had been hoping for as he recorded a leading time in the final slalom race to pull himself up from fourth place in the standings. Tension had been rising inside ParalympicsGB after the first three days of competition saw British athletes repeatedly fall short, including Simpson who came fourth in the downhill on Monday after winning gold in Beijing four years ago. Earlier on Tuesday there had been further disappointment when Menna Fitzpatrick came last in the women’s VI combined. But with Britain now on the board thanks to the 23-year-old Simpson, there will be renewed confidence going into the remainder of the week. “It was just technically good, solid skiing”, said Simpson, speaking alongside his guide, Rob Poth, after the race. “That was the main aim and I think we carried that out quite well. The visually impaired [classification] is really strong. There’s lots of really quick guys in there. So, yeah, we’re very, very pleased to get on to the podium.” Simpson said he felt no pressure in the slalom run, after finishing more than a second off the pace in the opening super-G race and more than half a second behind Aigner. “We had a clear plan and that helps with dealing with the pressure”, he said. “The focus is just entirely on carrying out that plan so we were fully in the zone.” A dominant second run will now give the pair extra motivation for their two remaining events, which both come in the slalom. “Run by run we’re building up the confidence, but that definitely took it up another notch,” Poth said. “We’re getting closer and closer to that top step, we’re on a high and hopefully we can con...